In previous blogs, we looked at statistics and how water.org used public data to build a compelling statistic for their communications. Today I wanted to take a brief moment to explain why I am so obsessed with finding good stats for companies and nonprofits.
Learn from my mistakes
I learned a painful lesson when I was teaching my first college course. As a graduate student, puffed up with all the new theories and fancy words I possessed, I was eager to share all that I knew with my classes. The first time I tried to hold forth in my classroom on an oh so vital topic for which I prepared ten pages of notes, I could feel the energy in the room just evaporate. Twenty young students who were eager to learn got bombarded by my lecture, and I will never forget how their body language told me how bad I sucked as a teacher that day. No matter how impressed I was with my own knowledge, I had never bothered to think about how much my audience wanted to be in control of their journey toward knowledge.
How many times does this happen? We get so satisfied with what we know, that we don’t consider how to translate that knowledge into a fun, interactive and engaging journey for the people who want to know what we do and why it is important.
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