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JEFFREY FORBES: Alright welcome back. Alright have a seat so welcome back to this year’s edition, the third edition of Flash Talks. Flash Talks are a great part of NCWIT and we have a great set of presenters today. So in case you don’t know what a Flash Talk is, a Flash Talk is a very challenging presentation and we have some very, we have some great presenters who deserve your time and attention and sympathy because a Flash Talk is very difficult. So the way a Flash Talk works is there are 20 slides. Each slide advances after 15 seconds. So 20 slides times 15 seconds that equals five minutes And those slides are going to advance after 15 seconds regardless of what the presenter does. So it’s takes a lot of trust and a lot of practice. So today, what we’re going to do is we’re going to use the Flash Talks to introduce nine really exciting workshops that we have on tap for today at 4:15 and also tomorrow at eight o’clock. So as I said before, these speakers are bold and are, really have a great set of Flash Talks for you today. Okay? So, we’re going to get started with our first speaker who has a very good, who’s going to give a very good talk. So we have Mark Guzdial and Mark is going to talk about how he’s leading a workshop on the how you can contribute to expanding access to engaging computing education.
MARK GUZDIAL: Hi, you may have seen this picture from Code.Org, it’s a visualization showing us that only about one out of every 10 high schools in the United States offers some form of computing education but that’s the national picture. It turns out that in the United States K-12 education is actually decided at the state level. And the variance between states is enormous. In Mississippi, there are only two AP computer science teachers in the entire state. In Maryland, about half of the high schools offer computer science education in some form. I’m from the NSF funded alliance ECEP Expanding Computing Education Pathways and we’re about trying to help individual states, with our partners, to improve computing education and to broaden participation in computing. I wanna offer you a four step program for starting computing education reform in your state. The first step is to find your leaders. You need to find people who are going to take the big picture, see the overall picture of how from K-12 through university is gonna work together cause computing education reform isn’t going to just happen. Step two, figure out where you are in your state and how you make change happen. One of the things that’s been most surprising to us in ECEP is how each individual state configures K-12 education differently and makes decisions differently. For example, one of the questions that we all know is an important question is does CS count in my state? Well, CS can actually count in a lot of different ways and it’s important to figure out who can teach it. So for example, in Georgia where I’m from, AP computer science counts as a science but only business and math teachers can teach it. Go figure. Who decides who can teach what? So in most of the Southeast, K-12 education is a organized top-down. The State Department of Education decides what’s gonna be taught as opposed to individual districts or schools. But who decides teacher certification rules? In South Carolina it’s the Commission on Higher Education. In Georgia it’s the separate Professional Standards Committee. Do you have CSTA chapter in your state? You want one, probably two or three, if the way you support teachers, make sure that they’re, make them better. Make sure that they get retained longer. Do you have a pathway? So it turns out that because of federal Perkins legislation, it’s actually cheaper sometimes to have three computer science classes in your high school rather than just one. You need to figure out whether or not you have a Perkins pathway. The next step is to organize. Get your motley crew organized around the banner of pushing forward computing education. What you wanna do, what we found is most successful among the states is to have a multi-voice coalition. To gather together the folks from industry that really care about computing education. To gather the folks from the universities who can help push forward. The K-12 teachers who really know what’s going on and the people in the Department of Education who know how all things work and can actually get things changed. One of the models that we’ve been really excited about in South Carolina is called IT-oLogy. IT-oLogy was actually started by Blue Cross Blue Shield and now has a lot of other business partners. This is a privately funded effort to promote IT education. I think it’s a great model but I’d love to see another state’s as well. The next step is funding. You’re going to need some funding even before the big ticket items like professional development for all of your high school teachers. Some of the organizations that might offer you funding. What do you need funding for? One thing that you want to do is hold summit meetings. Gather together all of your motley crew. Gather together all your allies. Bring in the people that you would hope to be able to influence, the various stakeholders. Synergize, come up with a common vision and a plan for how to get there. Another thing that you’re gonna want to do early on is do a landscape report. How does computing education lay out in my state? What does it look like? Is it really beautiful? Is it really well organized with a lot of diversity and everywhere there’s a good smattering of computing education? Unfortunately, you’re probably going to find that your landscape report, when you do it for your state, looks a little bit more like this. Next picture. [laughter] There’s just not a lot out there. And what’s out there is not very diverse whatsoever. Now how do you find out what kind of diversity you have and among the people who are taking computing education? Well one way is to look at advanced placement exams. And so this next visualization shows us the gender diversity among AP exams. You’ll see on the right hand side, it’s mostly female. On that left hand side it’s mostly male. You see that most AP exams are actually mostly female exam-takers. Computer science way down low at the bottom of the left hand corner, the most gender biased of any of the AP exams. But that’s the national view. Let’s look at individual states. This is all the states in the histogram based on the percentage female AP CS exam-takers. See the bump to the far right? That’s Tennessee. They are so far ahead of all other states, there’s no other state in that other bin. All due to this one woman, Jill Pala taches at an all girls high school in Tennessee. Last year she sent 30 women to take the AP CS exam. An individual can make change in computing education. An individual can change a state’s ranking. The final message for all of you is Mad-Eye Moody’s constant vigilance. It turns out that computing education doesn’t stay fixed. In Georgia, AP CS counts one day and it doesn’t the next. Math teachers can’t teach it one day and they can the next. It takes a lot of effort to keep on top of computing education and make sure that good things happen and that’s not supposed to be there. Thanks very much. [laughter] [applause]
JEFFREY FORBES: Great Job Mark. So next up we have Rachael King, whose workshop is going to present effective techniques for social media campaigns. Why You Should Never Raffle Off An iPad Unless You’re Apple.
RACHAEL KING: Hello everyone. I am going to talk to you today about social media campaigns if you come to the workshop. I’m going to talk about the good, the bad and most importantly why you should never raffle off and iPad unless you are Apple. That’s a little bit of a teaser, this title. But my name’s Rachael King and I am the brand new head of communications at DogVacay. DogVacay is my second tech start-up. I came from Adobe before that. So I’ve been in the sort of tech world for quite some time at this point. So social media campaigns. Why? Some of you probably hardly dabble in social media. It seems really daunting and hard to even fathom how you would do one of these things that you see. But actually the value far outweighs the risks and the learning. I believe that the best thing that you can do, the best reason to do it, and these are just some of the kinds of campaigns, I’m gonna talk about in the workshop, is because it gives you the opportunity to get in front of an entire new demographic, a new target audience to get your message about your organization or mission out to a whole group of people who don’t even know you. I’m going to talk about the different kind of campaigns, which business goals each one supports, delve into a case study for each type so that you get an idea about you know what type should I do? And when should I do it? I’m going to go into not just the big brands, the Pepsi, Facebook campaigns with the million dollar budget but also some non-profits, some start-ups because that’s where I come from, the zero dollar, shoestring budget and I wanna make sure that even when we do examine some of the larger ones like Lays for example. You walk away knowing that you can take these campaigns and make them work at any level for you, no matter what it is that you’re working with, what kind of resources that you have. I’m really interested, I’m looking forward to go deeping, sorry, diving deeper into these campaigns cause we can take away some best practices, the things that they did right, things that they did wrong. For example, inspired content, when you create something magnificent like the Dove Real Beauty Sketches that I think we’re probably all familiar with, with their 63 million views, that kind of content I don’t like the word viral but that’s what it really was. You know, it’s undeniably viral content and it puts your name, your brand, your mission in front of so many people that otherwise never would have seen it. And so, we’ll talk through all the different ways that you can capitalize on culture events like for example, A1’s Consciously Uncoupling campaign, for those of you who are familiar with that pop culture reference. So I’ve got a lot of stuff that we’ll dive deep into and I want it to be sort of a really back and forth. So if you have questions, I’m looking forward to that. By the time you leave, I want to make sure that you know exactly what the components, key components of a social media campaign should be for you. What those building blocks look like and the takeaways. So you have your specific business goal, design the campaign around that and then we’ll even, we’ll break it down further. So not, once you have the overarching strategy, how do you create this, how do you come up with the ideas? What, you know, where does this creativity come from? You can crowdsource from inside your own organization, from your audience, for example. Go through all sorts of ideas. Once you’ve built the campaign, how do you market it? How do you get the word out, especially if you don’t have an ad budget that you can just, you know, promote the crap out of it on Facebook. We’ll go through all different kinds of techniques that you can use to make sure that the word gets out there and people see this. Finally, how do we measure the campaign and make sure that it was successful based on your business goals. Then there are different ways of measuring for each business goal and we’ll talk about which go with what. Finally, I wanna talk about some fantastic tools you can use to help track your progress, your success, your failures and even tweak it during the campaign so that you make sure that it’s absolutely as powerful for you as it can be. Since it is such a fast moving thing it is such real time and you can often tweak it while it’s even going on. Of course, we’re gonna talk about some of the things that are going wrong, the blooper reel if you will. So we’ll talk about the great ones but also the failures and what to avoid, how to make sure that you don’t end up on the spot of that brand who did everything wrong. So I’ve got a couple of really interesting stories for that and just takeaways as far as what not to do, which is almost as important as what to do. There we go. So the final takeaways with any social media campaign are always gonna be be creative, be smart, be I wanna say, I changed this so be timely and I’m also gonna add be careful because I think being careful is important as well when it comes to making sure that you’re not stepping on any toes, as far as capitalizing on real time marketing and so we’ll get all into that in depth but thank you so much, look forward to seeing some of you in the workshop later. [applause]
JEFFREY FORBES: Thank you Rachael. Our next speaker will be Ed Lazowska who’s leading a workshop with Eric Roberts, Addressing Strategies For Dealing With The Surge In Enrollment In Computer Science. And I have to do one thing. Since we’re NCWIT and NCWIT’s all about change makers and influencers, I have to give Eric credit because Eric, when I was an undergrad a long time ago, influenced me and to go to grad school and be a professor. So you can blame him for me standing up here. [applause]
ED LAZOWSKA: Great well no better introduction than that. It’s great to be here. As you know they’re going to be nine of these workshops, one of those is going to be fantastic and despite speaking third, we’re number five in Quora and what we’re gonna do is discuss with you how to respond to dramatic changes in enrollment in computer science. All of us are experiencing it, you read it in the New York Times, Harvard’s intro course was the front page of this section a while ago. If you look at intro course enrollment at Harvard is about to pass Econ 20 as the most popular introductory course at Harvard which is quite amazing. Econ 20 has had that position for decades. It’s not just at Harvard, this is the first intro course at Standford, MIT, Penn as well as Harvard just sort of breaking out. I want to mention that Stanford actually is continuing upwards. There’s one more quarter of enrollment that’s not represented in that graph. It’s also not just at elite private institutions. At Michigan and at Washington, big state schools, you see the same thing. We never suffered the dip that some other universities did but we’re now teaching nearly 2,800 students a year in our first introductory course. Just astonishing numbers, in sort of nine sections across four quarters. The enrollments at most of our schools are past the previous dot com boom highs. I’ll show you more about this later. And what I’m doing is showing you the data. Now we’re not gonna talk to you in our session. We’re gonna have a discussion about how to respond to this. At many schools including Washington, increasing proportions of students are taking the second course. That is they’re continuing and I’ll show you in a second that they’re continuing into upper-division courses as well. Many of us are also experiencing increasing female participation. We’re now at 37% women in our first intro course and actually 30% in the major. So still way short of where we outght to be but finally making some progress at that and again Stanford for example has seen very much the same thing. Demand for the major is increasing. Computer science today is the most popular major at Stanford, it’s the most popular major at Harvard. It continues to be the most popular major at MIT and growing, it’s growing at Penn. Again across the country, demand for the major is surging. Here’s an astonishing graph of freshman admissions at Carnegie Mellon. Carnegie admits students directly to the school of computer science. They admit 135 a year. This year they had 6,174 freshman applicants, astonishing. Non-major demand for upper-division courses is skyrocketing. This is the third course at Harvey Mudd non-majors. On the right is Harvard upper-division courses. I don’t know who’s a major and who’s a non-major but the one on the left with 15 students is operating systems and the one on the right with 200 was a sort of visualization course. Cornell upper-division major courses have 250 people in them. This is what you go to a small ivy league school for. It’s that, you know, gentle exposure to the field with loving care. Andrew Ng taught 760 students in the graduate machine learning course at Stanford Fall term. Actually Andrew’s TA’s did it. [laughter] And you know this is Stanford bodies in this Stanford course, larger enrollment Fall term than the intro course. We’re all familiar with these cycles of enrollment in the field. My belief, but it’s hard to gather any data on this and this is part of what we wanna discuss is there is something different going on this time. I think something really feels different and there are a bunch of possibilities. One is the students are figuring out that everybody in the 21st Century needs to have facility and computational thinking. I think that message is getting through and so I think that these cycles are not entirely due to the fact that it’s booming. I think students are also starting to realize that all fields are becoming information fields and if you can get a computer to do what you want even if you’re not a programmer alright or a software engineer, you’re gonna be more competitive in your field. I think we’re finally getting the message out that working in the software industry is not Dilbert. Our students in the software industry spend only 30% of their time writing programs. The rest is interacting and working with people in team design, talking to customers, talking to peers. It is the case that all of the jobs in STEM are in computing. 71% of all new jobs, this decade, in all STEM fields, including engineering, the physical sciences, the social sciences, the life sciences, and computer science, 71% are in computer science. So, my belief is that while we’ll always have these cyclic up and downs, the dramatic growth is gonna continue, not without the occasional downturn but I think we’re headed in a direction in which every student needs to be a student of computer science, even if they’re not a computer science major. So how are we gonna respond? At Princeton 10% of the students are computer science majors today. 10% of the faculty are never gonna be in computer science. Then there’s introductory course demand, upper-division major demand, graduate non-major demand. What are some possibilities? Restrict the size of the major. What are the impact of that on diversity? Exclude non-majors from upper-division courses, deny them the education they need, retreat to the core or let other departments teach our stuff, have huge class sizes, utilize lot’s of lecturers or let Coursera do it. So this is what we want to discuss with you. What are you experiencing? How are you responding? How do you envision the short-term and the long-term future? What are the implications for the diversity of our field which we all care about? I’m done, thanks. [applause]
JEFFREY FORBES: Thank you Ed. So our next speaker, Jeff Cohen, his workshop is going to help you learn how to make an inclusive classroom. So yes you do belong here.
JEFF COHEN: Thanks a lot, I’m happy to be here. I’m a social psychologist and what I’m selling here today are two big ideas that are deceptively simple but profound in their implications for teaching, learning, education and testing and for closing the achievement gap. So these are two big ideas that my workshop will focus on and they all are kind of like axioms from which a lot of pedagogy and curriculum follow. The first idea is subjective perception matters for motivation and achievement including in STEM related fields. It’s not just the objective classroom but how we subjectively perceive it, that drives motivation and achievement and even if the objective environment that we’re in, same classroom, same teacher, is the same, the subjective experience of it can differ radically because of gender, because of race, because of religious affiliation. Any number of things. The second big idea that is really key, new and bold is that psychology can be harnessed for educational gain, closing achievement gaps. So I’ll talk, we’ll talk a bit about this burgeoning field in social psychology that shows how timely interventions can close achievement gaps. Here’s an example of how perception matters in school by Tobias Wolff. He’s talking about being a Jewish student at an elite prep school and he says it was better that I decided not to say I was Jewish, even though there was no Antisemitism, it just seemed that the Jewish boys, even the popular ones had an air of apartness. An air of apartness that was cast upon them not by themselves but by the school in which they existed. Even though Christians and Jews are in the same school, same campus, the experience of being there is different. We think that women may face threats to their belonging in math and science fields similar to this, because of negative stereotypes, targeted at their gender group and it’s belonging in STEM related fields. And this is an idea pioneered by Claude Steele. He used an example of a female engineering student commenting on her experience. For some reason, I didn’t do well on tests, I’d just get stuck on a problem and then I think oh gosh, everyone else knows what they’re doing. Then I would think, I’m a blonde female athlete, I’m not supposed to be doing well in Physics. I knew it was just a stereotype but that didn’t help. Here is a study that shows down on the ground how this works. Exposed women and men to a neutral commercial, men and women perform equally on a math test but then present them with a commercial that reinforces the gender stereotype. A commercial about a woman salivating over a new brownie mix. That sort of reifies the stereotype that women belong in the kitchen. And women’s performance on the same math test plummets. For men it’s a non-event. For women, it’s a signal that maybe I don’t belong here, maybe people see me as suspect. Women who saw this stereotypic commercial, also expressed less ambition in math related careers. I think this is totally fascinating. They didn’t want to go into math related fields and science related fields as much. People say well women aren’t choosing to go into STEM fields. But what this suggests, these results, is that the freedom to choose may be an allusion when the stereotype and society controls the motivation to choose. [laughter] The graph matters just as much as the notes. The same test, stereotypes can be so saturated environment that even ordinary events can trigger them. Here we have just a math ability test. Women performed worse than men. Present that same math test and remove the stereotype as applicable. Tell them that the math test is insensitive to gender differences and that gender difference goes away. I can feel like I belong and perform up to my potential better when the stereotype is removed from the situation as a potential threat to my sense of belonging just as in the opening anecdote. How can we help? Well we can lessen threatening cues in the environment as the talks previously have suggested. Cut down on prejudice, eradicate the chilly environment that many women express about their experiences in computer science, engineering and elsewhere. But also introduce, embed affirming cues into the classroom and there are several successful interventions. For instance, just to take the blush off the rose, when adolescents were taught that intelligence can grow, the gender gap on the statewide achievement test was eliminated in one study. When female science majors received a note from their instructor that said hey I believe in your potential to reach a higher standard, the women performed as well as the male science majors. A little validation can go a long way at the right time and the right place. When female students wrote about a core value in class, their test scores improved significantly and those improvements persisted through the semester. And more dramatically, when the same exercise was given to middle school students, it lead middle school girls, seven years later, to be more likely to enroll in college. All of these come from scientifically – validated studies getting at best practices. And they suggest that in the right time, in the right place, a brief experience of validation that assures people of their belonging, can go a long way. Thanks. [Applause]
JEFFREY FORBES: Thanks Jeff. So the our next speaker, Christopher Metzler, he will, his workshop is going to introduce how you can bring change in your organization. Be A Change Leader, Without Ruining Your Career.
CHRISTOPHER METZLER: Okay good afternoon. I’m sorry I can’t hear that.
AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.
CHRISTOPHER METZLER: Good afternoon and so I wanna start off by thanking the folks who have gone before me because what they have done is made the rationale for why you should attend my workshop. [laughter] So we’re gonna spend some time looking at issues of diversity and we’re also gonna look at it through the lens of your own personal brand, whatever that personal brand is. So here the three objectives but I think it’s important to really look at understanding how to apply your own change effort and keep your career in tact. It is not going to be about the person who is seen as the bulldozer, if you will. And so the model that we’re gonna use is look at how do you me the change and by me I mean how do you take your brand, make it your own and have that change? More than 80% of all change efforts fail. In large part because people don’t me the change. It is seen as in fact, something that’s kind of out there in the cloud. So a couple of things that we’re gonna look at is changed behavior. Who do you need to get on board? What are your sponsor teams? What is a change agent? How does that change agent work? And framing the shared need for outcomes. Important to understand, that we need to meet people where they are and help them along the way from the beginning. It’s not about counting numbers. It’s about who counts. Making the end-state actionable and this goes to the question of what actions do you need to take at the individual level, interpersonal, group and organizational level to meet that change? We’ll talk about resistance and the invoice, pay me now or pay me later. There is no change without resistance. The question though is why are people resisting? How do you communicate during the change? Here are some of the areas that we’re gonna look at betrayal, denial, trying to figure out who you are, who the organization is. Whatever you measure, you will likely get. Which essentially means you have to know what you’re measuring from the beginning and again not strictly numbers but how you change the organization at it’s core using your brand. 10 tips for a good measurement plan. If you wanna know what they are, we’ll see you at the workshop. [laughter and applause] And just a couple more real quickly, so we’ll look at your change management, activities, key activities, when, who leads and what support that you need to really get this done from an implementation standpoint. Diversity efforts in organizations work when in fact you have baseline assessment. So here is one example of baseline assessment. We’ll talk through some more examples but this is one example that we’ll use as well. And then leading, implementing, sustaining again lots to go in that box. So I would invite my other panelists to ditch their workshop and come to mine. [laughter] So we’re gonna consider several hashtags. Bossy, you go girl, gender, social construction, change and career. Thank you very much, ppreciate it. [applause]
JEFFREY FORBES: Thank you Christopher although I do hope everyone will go to their own workshop for a little while. [laughter] Melissa Thomas-Hunt will be our next speaker. She’s going to, her workshop is focused on how to develop effective teams. So the title is Leveraging Expertise To Drive Team Innovation And Performance. Thanks Melissa.
MELISSA THOMAS-HUNT: Thank you so much. I’m certainly gonna be at my own workshop. [laughter] I draw up on some of my own anecdotal experience, going back to my days as a chemical engineering major at Princeton where I did the vast majority of my work in teams with my classmates and then went on to work for a tech company, although we didn’t call it that then, which was IBM. We worked in teams. We had to figure out how to leverage expertise. The key thing is to understand what are the metrics of performance and what are the metrics of innovation. As we’re thinking about, what is it that we actually need? So what does it mean to leverage expertise? What does it mean to need diverse perspectives? Diverse pools of reservoirs of knowledge that we have to leverage towards a particular outcome. How do we get that done effectively? And what might get in the way? We know that in the best of teams, there are hierarchies that emerge. There are differences in the power and therefore the influence that individuals are able to exert. And sometimes though power and influence differentials don’t necessarily map on to the expertise that we really need. Power is about potential. The potential to get things done. Influence is actually about the act of changing attitudes and behaviors. When we think about power, we think about the many sources that we can draw upon and they all come to bear in teams. Some of it has to do with the titles that we have. Some of it has to do with our control over resources, our ability to reward and punish. Some of it has to do with our alternatives away from that situation as Maggie Neale talked about. It also has to do with our reputation, our integrity, our control over information and the relationships that we have. But not all teams go well, we know that. We talk about those as the team killers. What are the things that prevent us from bringing together that information, that expertise toward the ends that we have. Well sometimes leaders dominate too much. They insert themselves into the process far more than is really warranted by their expertise. And we know that those teams don’t perform as well. We also know that there’s something called the Common Knowledge Effect that even though we’re bringing people together because they have diverse information, that knowledge that we tend to talk about those pieces of information that we have in common at the expense of the unique information. And so consequently, we’re really not leveraging our team members fully. When we start to think about that hierarchy we know that we tend to overweight the contributions of high status individuals, whether they’re leaders or other people who nominally have garnered status and that can become problematic. Separate from the leaders, many people like to talk. In an 8 person team we know that about three people will talk 67% of the time. Great if those are the three people who have the most valuable information but often that’s not the case. You have some experience with that don’t you? How do we manage those particular situations? So we’re also gonna talk about tips and techniques about how we do this. We don’t always have the luxury of designing our own teams but when we can curate them, what are the things we need to pay attention to? Who are the people that we need on the team? Do we need similar or different expertise? Do we want a flat structure or do we want one that’s actually hierarchal? What is the context and what are the outcomes that we’re seeking? So in terms of composition, most of us gravitate towards people who are similar to us. Whether it’s similarity because of where we come from, how we look, how we’re trained, our educational background, what our gender is. That’s probably not the most effective way, given the nature of the daunting task that we’re being asked to tackle. Should we have a flat structure? We like to think of ourselves as being egalitarian but we know that even in the flattest of teams, hierarchy emerges but those status differentiations don’t necessarily marry well with getting full participation. So we need to think about it as we’re curating teams, integrating both the structure that we put in place and the way in which we compose those teams. Such that when we know the types of outcomes, we can figure out what’s the best interaction of the two of them. So, lest we dwell on what goes wrong in teams. We wanna talk about the essentials of great teams. And we know that leaders, whether they’re appointed by others or whether they emerge up, have the power to help teams to harness their expertise. They have the opportunity to build trust amongst the team such that when those divergent perspectives emerge, rather than having it morph into bad conflict, the team is able to leverage it towards good outcomes. They also are able to identify ane help others understand who knows what. And then knowing who knows what, better performance can often be obtained. Leaders also, beyond under the best circumstances, leaders step into a new role beyond just being a contributing member. However, it can’t leave behind the expertise that they have worked very hard to build. They have to also appropriately lend their expertise to the team so the team has full information. In a very, experiential workshop, we’re gonna work together and have great conversation and I’m gonna answer some questions about how to do this most effectively. Thank you. [applause]
JEFFREY FORBES: Thank you Melissa. So our next speaker is Brayden King whose workshop is going to help you to learn how to leverage expertise, drive team innovation and performance.
BRAYDEN KING: Thank you so I’m gonna talk to you about how to mobilize people around you to create cultural change. So at some point in your careers, if you haven’t already experienced this already, you’re likely to feel frustrated because you’re not as influential as you’d like to be in your organization. Or because the culture around you is prohibiting change. It’s prohibiting your upward mobility. There are three factors that you can sort of harness to make you become more influential and become more effective at creating cultural change around you. Those three factors I’m gonna focus on are one creating and building political capital. Second, mobilizing coalitions to take into a united vision to create change. And third, framing ideas in such a way that they actually want, make people want to do things and to change their actions. Political capital are the resources that you use to augment your influence. Think of the personal networks, the personal relationships that you develop or your reputation. You can actually cash those in to make yourself more influential, to make yourself heard by others. Some of them are quick to build like symbolic capital. You can buy some kinds of symbols and some of them are much slower to build like cultural capital which require years of experience to learn the rules of the game in your organization. The important point of this is that political capital is something you have to learn how to use and invest wisely. When you invest it wisely, you can actually get great returns from that and with returns come more influence but when you invest it poorly, you can actually become less influential and your career can experience some downturns. To be influential you need to be able to use your political capital with influence skills to deploy them and use your political energy wisely. Your influence is a product of that minus the political capital, the influence skills and the will of your opponents plus the political capital of your alliances. That leads us to the second thing which is building coalitions with people who have a like-minded vision of change in the organization. To build coalitions you need to start by creating a free space where people can talk about the kinds of changes they would like to make in the organization and free spaces are typically characterized by a few things that we’ll talk about in the class where you can create an environment where people are not afraid to put some risk some things on the line. To really take advantage of coalitions, you wanna have four characteristics associated with them. One is you wanna have worthy, legitimate goals. Second you want people to be united, you want a number of people to be involved and you want them to be committed. You also need to figure out where you’re gonna focus as your building coalitions. You don’t want to just focus on people who are allies. People who you already know you have on your side. You also want to be aware of the people that you need to be, the opponents, the people who you need to be, deal with carefully so they don’t thwart your plan. To build effective coalitions, you also need to be able to pick the right opportunities, If you find that you’re wasting your time by trying to create change when the time is not right. You’re likely to lose your political capital and possibly lose influence. The third thing that I’m gonna focus on is how to frame your ideas so that they are memorable, that they motivate people and that they cause an emotional trigger in people you’re trying to get to take action. Frames are particularly effective when they are memorable. So we’ll talk about those characteristics of frames, the way you say things that make people want to remember them and that basically comes down to having an idea that is really distinctive and deceptively simple. If your idea is really simple, and there’s sort of a core idea motivated around that, people are more likely to remember that. You also want it to be distinctive, it can’t just be the same thing that people have heard again and again. So we’ll talk about ways to enhance write it to make it more distinctive and simple. You also want your frame to be based in language that will trigger people’s values so that they will feel motivated and want to take action. The best way to do this is to have a narrative that goes with your idea that people cannot only understand what you want them to do but they also understand why you want them to do it and so creating that narrative that provides that justification for why they should take action is what is going to lead them to eventually do that and it’ll help them to see where they need to be going. If you want people to be not just motivated but actually to do something then you also need to have sone sort of emotional trigger in your frame. You need to anchor them in an emotion that is associated with the eventual goal that you would like to accomplish and so your frame should trigger some sort of common emotion among the people that you’re reaching out to and trying to persuade. We’ll talk about the psychological process whereby this happens. There’s a physiological reaction. There’s also a way that which good frames start to trigger a value base component where people will begin to think about what’s important to them. We’ll go through these three ideas, building political capital, mobilizing coalitions and framing your ideas in ways that help people remember them and are motivated to take action. And we’ll talk about this, it will not only help you create change but will also enhance your career so you are a more powerful influential leader. Thank you. [applause]
JEFFREY FORBES: Thank you. Okay last but certainly not least. Raquell Holmes and Anna Giraldo-Kerr are going to demonstrate what you’re going to learn from the coaching at their workshops.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Okay, let’s play ball.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Okay now what do I do again?
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: You’ve got to bend your knees.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Okay.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Shoulder.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Okay.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Okay hold the back straight.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Yup.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: And try to hit the ball.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Okay.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: She’s never gonna hit it.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: You ready?
RAQUELL HOLMES: Yeah.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Here we go.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Yeah. Whoa. Ahh.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: It’s okay, it’s okay you’re practicing, we’re practicing, we’re building the muscle.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: She’s not gonna hit this ball.
WOMAN IN YELLOW SHIRT: She’s not good.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Hey, hey, hey let’s play come on.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Alright, I’ll try again. Wait so, I’m not ready, hold on. [laughter] It’s hard.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Take your time come on.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Okay.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: We’re practicing here.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: You ready?
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Forward, elbows up.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Yeah.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Did I? No.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: It’s getting better, you don’t see it but it takes practice. Let’s do it come on.
RAQUELL HOLMES: What am I doing wrong? I wish
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: You’re not doing anything wrong, you’re learning slowly and that’s
RAQUELL HOLMES: You must not be telling me something, I should be able to hit it.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: I am telling you what to do. You just need to be patient and practice.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: You ready?
RAQUELL HOLMES: No.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Could you just hit it, so I could do something? [laughter]
RAQUELL HOLMES: That’s not helping.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Okay, it’s coming slow
RAQUELL HOLMES: Alright.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: this time
RAQUELL HOLMES: Alright, alright. Did I hit it?
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: I think you would have felt it. [laughter]
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: You’re getting there, she’s learning slowly, we’re practicing here, okay?
RAQUELL HOLMES: Alright.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Alright. Alright.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Come on people, we’re building strength here.
RAQUELL HOLMES: One more time, I can try it one more time alright.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Come on, come on.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Alright.
WOMAN IN YELLOW SHIRT: You can do this right?
RAQUELL HOLMES: Alright.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Okay.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Here we go.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Yup, yup.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Swing. [sighs]
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: It’s okay, it’s okay.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Alright I’m tired.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: It’s okay.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Okay. I get
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Tired?
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: You almost hit it that time.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Are we supposed to keep practicing?
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: You are but it’s okay.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: You want me to try it?
RAQUELL HOLMES: This stuff is hard.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: It is hard, nobody said it was gonna be easy. You know I can give you guidelines but it takes patience and practice.
RAQUELL HOLMES: I’m not gonna get it in one time?
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: No, no. [laughter] No you’re not, it’s practice. Nobody, you know
RAQUELL HOLMES: Okay.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Can I try?
RAQUELL HOLMES: Yeah, yeah let’s go ahead yeah we’ll switch.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: You wanna pitch?
RAQUELL HOLMES: Yeah let me try that.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: You want to play third?
RAQUELL HOLMES: Sure.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Okay.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Ooh this stuff is hard.
RAQUELL HOLMES: I’m glad you guys you could practice with
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Okay come on.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Alright, you ready?
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: What am I supposed to do?
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Bend your knees.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Okay like that?
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Keep your eye on the ball. Hold the bat. Yup, yup up your elbow.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Here it comes.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Oh, ooh, almost, almost.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: It’s okay you see.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: How can you tell it was almost?
RAQUELL HOLMES: I think the bat was like really close to the ball. [laughter]
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: I didn’t see anything happen.
RAQUELL HOLMES: That’s pretty good, that’s pretty good.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: I can see it happen, it’s happening slowly. Guys come on.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Okay.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Alright here it comes. Oh wow. How’d you do that?
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: I don’t know. Is that called a bundt? [laughter]
RAQUELL HOLMES: Well I think it went past, it went past, you swung right?
ELIZABETH: You hit it, okay.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: I’m really doing that
RAQUELL HOLMES: How did you do that?
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Yeah you see it’s happening people. Come on.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Hang on let me try again.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Okay yeah let’s do it.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Okay.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Come on let’s do it.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Here it goes.
ELIZBETH: Oh my God.
RAQUELL HOLMES: You get it.
ELIZABETH: Wait, wait, wait, wait.
RAQUELL HOLMES: And she can catch.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Hey that was so cool.
RAQUELL HOLMES: This is so awesome.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Hey you go.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Wow.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Wow.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Do it again.
RAQUELL HOLMES: This is impressive, you’re scaring me. Alright, here it goes. Dang wow, I think we should all try again.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Somebody get it my work here is done.
RAQUELL HOLMES: That’s awesome it went all the way over there.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Good catch.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Excellent. That’s great.
ELIZABETH: Hey I wanna try.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: It is.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Yeah.
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Okay you try it.
ELIZABETH: I can try.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: Yeah, let’s switch.
WOMAN IN BLUE HAT: You can hold this one.
RAQUELL HOLMES: We’ll find out.
ELIZABETH: I have a story to tell. I was asked to be part of our division softball team recently and I thought I was really excited because I used to play softball when I was in college and I’m going to get to do this again. But guess what. The reason why they asked me is because they needed a girl all the time on the team to play. They didn’t even ask if I was any good. They just put me at the end of the batting order right before the pitcher. Hey you know that really sucks. [laughter]
ANNA GIRALDO-KERR: Thank you. Elizabeth’s story illustrates how a potentially joyful event could become a really sucky event, you know. Most of us can relate to a story in some sort of another. Instances when we have felt anxious, left out, under minded pretty much a micro-inequity. The good news is that we know what a micro-inequity is so we can deal with it. To clarify, a micro-inequity is a small action, a behavior or an event that makes us feel uncomfortable, anxious, second-guessed, under-valued, isolated and I am willing to be that every one of us in this room has felt that way regardless of gender, race or ethnicity. The good news is that during my workshop, Micro-Actions Micro-Impact we will be role playing micro-inequities and we will be working on ways to counteract them, to divert them, to stop them. One of the ways is through micro-affirmations.
RAQUELL HOLMES: Exactly. So as you saw in some of the slides just before, a micro-affirmation are those things that we can say or do to include our colleagues or our students. It’s the statement that says you belong here, like some of our previous speakers mentioned. It’s this thing that says you’re valuable, I want you included. But it’s awkward for us when we’re sitting in a room and we see something happen or experience it to actually respond. Something goes what happened? What am I gonna do? So we actually need to practice. We need to practice being able to respond to these moments and to make moves that actually include one another. So in my workshop which is With The Academic Alliance in the Crystal Rooms, we’re doing two separate workshops. We’ll be using improvisational theater exercises, yes those awkward exercises like you do at the gym to stretch your abilities to be supportive, to come out and support your colleagues and create an exclusive environment that is a micro-affirmation to create inclusion. So we want to join you, join us. I can read the prompt. Join us to practice and stretch your muscles. In fact, we invite you to join us in this song that’s a tradition of baseball in the seventh inning. If you know it, sing along. ♪ Take me out to the ball game ♪ ♪ Take me out to the crowd ♪ ♪ Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack ♪ ♪ I don’t care if I never get back ♪ ♪ For it’s root, root, root for the home team ♪ ♪ If they don’t win, it’s a shame. ♪ ♪ Cause it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out, ♪ ♪ At the old ball game ♪ Come and join us. [applause]
JEFFREY FORBES: Thank you very much. So can we give all of our speakers a round of applause. [applause] Mark had reflected that Flash Talks are like Nascar, people just go for to see the crashes and there were no crashes. So those of you who were looking for that were disappointed, there you go. Anyway, so coming up next we’re going to have the workshops start at 4:15 and after the workshops, make sure to come back for our special guest when we’re going to have the Aspirations in Computing Award Ceremony. And everything else is there. Am I missing anything else? It’s not like I can see anything back there anyway. [laughter] Michelle are we good? Okay. Thank you. [indistinct chatter]
