{"id":1,"date":"2014-11-18T19:11:04","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T19:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5167.temp.domains\/~leapica1\/?p=1"},"modified":"2023-03-09T19:06:26","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T19:06:26","slug":"lea-pica-wants-to-primp-your-slide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zohf.me\/lp\/lea-pica-wants-to-primp-your-slide\/","title":{"rendered":"My Name is Lea Pica, and I Want To Primp Your Slide"},"content":{"rendered":"

A long time ago, in a cubicle far, far away…<\/b><\/h2>\n

Your phone rings. It\u2019s one of your top executives, and she asks you to present an update of \u201cnumbers about mobile\u201d on your website during a leadership meeting. Gulp. So you\u2019ve worked around the clock and sifted through mountains of clickstream, CRM and other sorts of data and distilled it into shiny new insights…<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s now presentation day, and while you are showering your executive team with your nuggets of wisdom, you take a look around the room and suddenly notice something…disturbing.<\/p>\n

\"LeaYou don\u2019t have your audience\u2019s undivided attention<\/b>. Glazed eyeballs, a little drool, maybe some Candy Crush Saga? It\u2019s not pretty. By the end of the meeting, you\u2019re not exactly sure that your data had the impact you were hoping for. \u00a0And after days or weeks of no follow-up, you start to worry that all your hard work has disappeared into what I call the dreaded data black hole<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Fear not, dear reader. This blog is here to shed some light on why this can happen, and help you prevent it.\u00a0My name is Lea Pica, and I’m here to help you present your results to get results in your organization<\/b>. But first, an origin story (as a closet Marvel Comics\u00a0nerd, I\u2019m entitled):<\/p>\n

I ungracefully took\u00a0the\u00a0stage for the first time at the tender age of 3, performing for my anxious and excitable parents in a ballet recital. Despite severe stage fright, I was completely bitten by the musical theatre\u00a0bug and continued to perform in plays, musicals and opera (yikes) through high school. I was voted “Most Likely To Be A Thespian” (that did wonders<\/em> for my high school street cred) and was confident I was destined for a life of stardom.<\/p>\n

The caliber of college theatre, however, was like an Arctic Char smack to the face; these people were GOOD. And COMMITTED<\/strong>. When I realized that my talent and resolve to go professional paled in comparison to my classmates, I decided to hang up my jazz shoes and pursue an inevitable career in digital marketing. A much more stable and lucrative venture, and yet I wistfully longed for the stage.<\/p>\n

Until I realized I could still “perform”…during\u00a0my work presentations. And the more head-down, true grit, Bob Fosse-focus I brought from the\u00a0theatre to the conference room, the more rewarding the response. But after arriving at the great halls of an illustrious financial institution seven years ago to manage their ad agency web analytics, I still wasn’t making the difference I was hoping for<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

With my readout slides packed with\u00a0exciting\u00a0embellishments like frenzied\u00a0transitions and kaleidoscopic pie charts, I\u00a0simply didn’t understand why my executives weren’t tossing roses at my feet.<\/p>\n

\"LeaThen one day, it all changed. I came across some really exciting site search data and wanted to get it noticed by my bosses. (And yes, when you’re a digital analyst, exciting site search data is a thing.)<\/p>\n

Now, agencies looooove meetings. Like, 9-hours-of-meetings-a-day kind of love. I was subjected to more mind-numbing<\/del>\u00a0underwhelming\u00a0presentations than I care to remember. Having the attention span of a Shubunkin goldfish (yup, I said Shubunkin), I’m a particularly challenging audience member to keep entertained.<\/p>\n

I thought to myself: how would I keep me<\/em> engaged?\u00a0These site search insights\u00a0were really important to me, but I\u2019d be damned if I would watch my executives turn into extras from the Walking Dead. There had to be a better way<\/strong>. So I went on a 3-year philosophical journey to find answers to this deep, metaphysical question:<\/p>\n

\"Lea<\/p>\n

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good Data?<\/h2>\n

I sought to answer this question through\u00a0tireless\u00a0self-study of the presentation philosophies of Garr Reynolds<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Nancy Duarte<\/a>. I voraciously consumed data visualization best practices by\u00a0Edward Tufte<\/a> and Stephen Few<\/a>. I learned principles of human psychology as they relate to attention and recall. And I would discover several\u00a0answers to my question, but the simplest one I found is that most analytics\u00a0presentations fail to achieve two goals:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. To maintain their audience\u2019s attention<\/b>, and<\/li>\n
  2. To be memorable enough for the audience to act<\/b>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Some of the simple changes I made using my new tool belt allowed my site search results to make an unprecedented impact. A defunct site search optimization project was reactivated. Budget was allocated towards creating more robust analytics capabilities. Site search performance improved.\u00a0Change happened<\/strong><\/em>. What did this teach me? There are some really simple and effective ways to\u00a0make a presentation of data really stand out, but most people just don’t know about them. And then…a new opportunity arose.<\/p>\n

    A Conference Room Crusade Is Born<\/h2>\n

    I had the privilege of attending eMetrics and other digital analytics conferences, but I noticed a trend; everyone was talking about the practice of web analytics but no one was talking about the mistakes we make when presenting to our stakeholders. My mission became clear:\u00a0I wanted to share this journey with others in the digital analytics field and get the heck back on stage. I applied for every conference speaker call I could find, but the phone remained silent.<\/p>\n

    Then, I was given the opportunity to present about a topic of my choosing at the ForeSee Client Summit<\/a>. This was my big chance. I poured hundreds of hours of planning, preparation and designing. I called it “Get Their Attention<\/strong>“. And a moment\u00a0before stepping on stage, I panicked. I was about to ruffle some important\u00a0feathers with my nonconformist approach. I was terrified.<\/p>\n

    And…the audience loved it. I was overwhelmed by the response,\u00a0the attendees rapid-firing questions at me about data and presentation prep, design and delivery. Then the session received a tweet that would change everything:<\/p>\n

    \n

    Yowza! RT @bobbleheadguru<\/a>: @LeaSynePica: #ForeSee2013<\/a> … A @tgwilson<\/a> special!!! #measure<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/yfkH4QIagQ<\/a><\/p>\n

    \u2014 Tim Wilson (@tgwilson) May 22, 2013<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n