Challenge

I was tasked with planning a Big Data Summit (essentially a morning of presentations to customers on  the subject of Big Data). Not only was I to deliver the keynote I also needed to pull together a range of  content to be delivered by my colleagues.

In my current role I present technology solutions to customers.  These are often fairly dry and can be  difficult to relate too.  Early in my career a colleague told me to ‘always start with a story’ and this is  advice that I have often followed with great success.  Technology is not interesting for its own sake, it is  interesting for the results that it produces, whether it be improving health outcomes, catching fraud, or  enabling more informed decision making. I decided to utilize the skills learnt in the Design Thinking to  the development of a keynote presentation for a customer event.

Selection –

For the purpose of this assignment I have taken the Story Telling tool and applied to a presentation for  about 90 customers.  Not only was I delivering the keynote, which needed to be topical and interesting  but I also had responsibility for ensuring that the 5 speakers after me delivered content that flowed and  make sense. My area of expertise is Big Data, which can be a complex technical area and there is often a  great deal of confusion about what Big Data means and how it applies and how to get started.

Application

In planning my own presentation I focused on using industry and personal stories to relay the topic.   Examples I used included Uber who have been very successful at applying data and algorithms to enable  dynamic pricing in an industry that has remained untouched for almost a century. I also talked about my  recent experience at Future of Transport Conference and the impact that Big Data Analytics and  Machine Learning is having in transport.

In terms of the overall flow of the event I used the Story Telling approach to plan the agenda and ensure  that all presenters understood the “journey’ that we were taking customers on, and what “their piece of  the story” needed to convey.  In hindsight this sounds easy, but it actually took many hours to create a  flow/journey that made sense and could act as a guide for all presentations on the day.

Insight

Overall the entire morning was very successful; I had a great deal of very positive feedback on my  presentation and the very ‘personal’ approach that I utilised.

Probably the most important takeaway was using the Story Telling approach to plan the entire event.  Although it took a great deal of upfront planning it ensured that all of the customers left with a very  clear view of the topic but it also gave the presenters a very clear understanding of what was required  from them.  This is something that I would take forward to future events.

In terms of Design Thinking, I believe that this course has given me a number of tools and approaches  that will be useful in my current role.  It would be very useful to apply some of these techniques –  Visualisation, Journey Mapping, BrainStorming to current problems.

Approach

The technique was great for this particular type of problem and I would definitely use it again.  The only  difference being that I would involve the entire team in a “Story Development” session up front to map  out the journey, rather than creating the entire vision by myself.

