The Broadband Connection. Alan Carroll

data bombs on them.

      Sadly, it seems to be the norm that the presenter doesn’t think it’s his or her job to help the audience understand the data. The presenter’s only responsibility is to fly in, show up, throw the data out there, and leave. This sort of presenter believes it’s the audience’s job to make sense of the data that was dumped on them.

      This is not effective. The definition of communication is transmitting information from a sender to a receiver with the intention that the receiver understands the data. When you actually connect with the intention that your audience will understand the data, you’ll make a major transformational shift in your skills as a professional presenter. You will move from being a data dumper to being a professional who is regarded as one of the best in the industry, a genuine star. You will feel the power that comes from a successful presentation and the audience will enjoy a genuine, informative show.

      Now, let’s address the process of communicating a packet across the wireless space from the sender to the receiver with special emphasis on using space packets between the communication packets.

      In the ideal situation, you start your presentation/conversation by diving into your database of knowledge and pulling up a thought. You encapsulate the thought with a word, then add a video image, vocal tones, and maybe some physical objects. You consciously project the encapsulated thought across the space to the receiver. Once that burst of communication is complete, you pause and allow the audience to digest, process, think about, and absorb the data. During this pause, you relax your body, take a breath, and think about your next communication packet.

      Alice Bailey, the author of more than a dozen books on spiritual development, describes the speech process beautifully: “The purpose of speech is to clothe thought and thus make our thoughts available to others. When we speak we evoke a thought and make it present, and we bring that which is concealed within us into audible expression.”

      As I emphasized, the ability to create space packets between the communication packets is a critical skill for the IT professional presenter. Just as there are communication packets, there are also space packets. Space packets are the silence or pauses between the communication packets. When you talk to the audience, you are delivering not only data but space as well. And yet, when you watch IT presenters, you’ll see that few have little if any intention of consciously creating space packets. The vast majority focus their consciousness on content rather than on the space from which the content flows.

      In order to create space packets, you need to be in present time with the audience. You cannot have one foot in the future (that is, be inside your head thinking about what you are going to say next) while keeping the other foot in the past (thinking about what you just said). You need to have both feet in present time. In the moment of delivery, the past and future temporarily disappear. In this moment of now, or frame, you can create a communication that will make a difference, be of service, and contribute to the audience’s knowledge and understanding.

      (Your understanding of the concept of time and maintaining a broadband connection to the audience is critical to your success as a presenter and will be fully discussed in chapter six, which focuses on consciousness.)

      One critical mistake almost every presenter makes is to follow the first communication packets with another burst of packets without giving the audience a chance to digest what they have already heard. This failure to deliver space packets creates congestion, overloads the receivers’ buffers, and reduces throughput, thereby diminishing the effectiveness of the communication. The extraordinary communicators, like actors, have conscious control of their baud rate and can consciously create space packets between their communication packets.

      Why is it so difficult for presenters to create these space packets? Mostly because they have never made the distinction between content consciousness and space consciousness. Their attention is on the content itself, rather than on creating space between the content. Eckhart Tolle states that there are two types of consciousness: content consciousness and space consciousness. They both work together to produce an effective presentation. However, IT presenters are almost always focused on content rather than space.

      Presenters who are fixated on the data are not present in the room. They are barely connected to the audience. They have a 56k connection rather than a present-time, broadband connection to the audience. They have no presence. To put it another way, they suffer from data addiction and would rather make love to the data than be present to the audience. If they are not connected or consciously present in the room, where are they? They are in a place I call Data Land.

      Data Land is in a space outside of present time. It is a world in which unconsciousness rules and the power to communicate is weak and ineffective. It is a world in which you are unaware of your physical body.

      Fortunately, when you begin to shift your consciousness from the data to the space between packets, you return to being present in the room and can establish a broadband connection to the audience.

      You will immediately notice a major improvement in your delivery because you are no longer focused on the object/data/content but rather on the space itself. This is the exact opposite of the way the vast majority of IT professionals make presentations.

      When done properly, you are not delivering data; you are delivering space. When you begin to deliver space, the quality and effectiveness of your speaking increases because, in addition to maintaining a broadband connection to the audience, you will be relaxed throughout the entire conversation.

      Another reason it’s difficult to create space packets is because we have been conditioned to feel very strange and uncomfortable if we pause when standing in front of the audience. Part of the discomfort comes from an assumption you make about how the audience will react. If you don’t speak, you suspect that they will think you have lost your train of thought or you are unprofessional and not a very good speaker. However, the opposite is true. When you can stand in stillness, it sends a non-verbal message to the audience that you are not afraid of silence and you are not afraid of the audience. You, not the audience, are in charge of the conversation.

      Developing the skill of creating space packets begins with simply being able to stop speaking and pause. Think of it as stepping on the brake to stop the car. Anyone can step on the accelerator, but very few presenters can step on the brake and pause. To put it more bluntly, the issue is not your ability to speak but rather your inability to shut up.

      The benefits of pausing and creating space packets between the communication packets are enormous:

       • You will make a deeper impression on the audience and therefore be more memorable.

       • You will be more entertaining and put on a better show. Ben Kingsley, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Gandhi, when asked what made him such a successful actor, replied, “I am able to stand in the stillness and pause.”

       • You will look more professional and polished. By being able to create space packets, you will differentiate yourself and your company from your competitors. There is a saying in sales: Differentiate or Die. What one thing makes you different from the rest of the herd? You create space in your presentations.

       • You will convey the impression of caring that the audience understands the communication by giving them time to understand an idea before going on to the next communication. They will feel enriched because you are allowing them to “eat the data food.”

       • The only time you can consciously relax your body is when you are not speaking. If you are not relaxed, it will send out a tense vibration to the audience and they will become uncomfortable. However, when you are relaxed, it sends out a vibration that will relax the audience. Being able to create a space packet in front of the audience is like stepping into a Jacuzzi. It is very relaxing.

      I remember a physics class I took in high school in which the teacher used a fish tank full of water in one of the experiments. Two balls were suspended in the tank. One was connected to a motor, which