Evangelism101

Evangelism 101 Warning: This presentation contains male frontal nudity

About me
I’m 6 ft. tall, weigh 215 pounds, I enjoy long walks on the beach …

About me
The obligatory slide that tries to convince you that my past experience somehow qualifies me to be worth a ninth of your registration money (not counting food) instead of just some guy who’s really just saying a bunch of stuff that you already know, but perhaps haven’t thought about it in quite the way I’m outlining.
Jobs I’ve had where I was a OVERT evangelist:
Art Director (Start-up print magazine for Tribune Co.)
Senior Producer/Design and Production (Tribune Co. Web and AOL sites)
User Experience Director (washingtonpost.com)
Director of Site Development (washingtonpost.com)

About me
The obligatory slide that tries to convince you that my past experience somehow qualifies me to be worth a ninth of your registration money (not counting food) instead of just some guy who’s really just saying a bunch of stuff that you already know, but perhaps haven’t thought about it in quite the way I’m outlining.
Jobs I’ve had where I was a COVERT evangelist:
Associate Editor (Tribune Co. print magazine)
Design Manager (washingtonpost.com)
Senior Information Architect (K12: online education co.)

Evangelism: The there there
Enthusiasm to the point of zealotry
Group dynamics
Change

Change
“ Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.”
--- Robert Kennedy

Evangelism and the IA
IA as a discipline
“There is this thing and it is called information architecture.”
IA as a legitimate discipline
“What are you laughing at? C’mon, I’m serious, a solid information architecture is essential to your success.”
IA solutions
“Why are you still laughing? Stop that. This stuff is going to work. Probably.”

Evangelism and the IA
IA mechanisms
Easy sells: Site maps, content inventories
Harder sells: Conceptual wireframes, user task flows, non-linear interaction maps
IA building blocks
Primacy of user goals
User-centered design
User research

Bad reasons to be an evangelist
Fame
Power
It looks cool on a business card
Chicks dig it

Evangelism + quest for fame =

Evangelism + quest for fame =
Paris Hilton
at a charity
event

Evangelism + lust for power =

Evangelism + lust for power =
Pat Buchanan
running for
president

Credibility
Using evangelism for your own fame or power damages your credibility
Credibility is essential for an evangelist
Requires honesty, integrity, consistent excellence
The appearance of credibility is secondary
Requires credibility, presentation/facilitation skills

Good reasons to be an evangelist
Status quo is not enough
You have the passion and mad skills
You just can’t help yourself
Square pegs: round holes
Three-side pegs: square or round holes
Are you an evangelist and don’t know it?

You might be an evangelist if …
You stop your department’s monthly brown bag lunch with the CEO to demand: “When are we going to cut all the crap and finally talk about the real problem here???”

You’ve seen the beginning of the movie Jerry Maguire a dozen times and you still can’t figure out why Tom Cruise got fired.

You drop Bill Gates a personal e-mail every time you think of another thing that bugs you about that damn talking paper clip.

Every week, you find yourself trying to convince the office cleaning crew to install the toilet paper roll in the “correct” way.

You have a recurring nightmare where the company’s adherence to existing processes inadvertently opens the Gates of Hell and initiates Armageddon.

So what does an evangelist do?
They help things change
By the work of their “day job”
Solve problems rather than just alleviate symptoms, trade ownership for consensus around new kinds of thinking
By their involvement within projects
Function as an outside consultant whether they are one or not.
By initiating group creative exercises
Run workshops, Home Cookin’ sessions
By circulating information
Author e-mail newsletters, collect timely articles from other industries

So what does an evangelist do?
They lead change from behind
They stimulate change by asking questions
They unearth and encourage expertise (especially under-appreciated expertise)
They are a resource for, and supporter of other evangelists

8 random rules of evangelism

1. Be shameless

Be shameless
Do what you have to do to make change happen, no matter how personally embarrassing
But first, identify the envelope you are trying to push:
Your audience
+ Your goals
= Your envelope

2. Be fuzzy

Be fuzzy
Skill sets are more useful than job descriptions
Utilize different levels of evangelism for different challenges or projects

3. Don’t be fuzzy

Don’t be fuzzy
Demystify everything
Use existing words if commonly understood
If not, create a new common language
Utilize a common perspective
That’s the beauty of User-Centered Design
“Demystify” doesn’t always mean “explain everything”

4. Be tactile

Be tactile
Bind squishy concept to hard pixels
Action items
High concepts/practical implications
Illustrations
Case studies

5. Own minutia

Own minutia
People tend to give away the most influential aspects of a project
Process
Grunt work
Details

6. Fear the incremental

Fear the incremental
Incremental change is frequently confused with evolutionary change

Incremental: Changing how related links are displayed

Evolutionary: Developing an automated way to create related links

7. Incite the riot, but try not to lead it

Incite the riot, but try not to lead it
You will be more effective if the self interest of those being evangelized is greater than your own.

8. Protect your poets and pirates

Poets
Those who tend to think about and describe things in quite unique ways
Protect your poets and pirates
Pirates
Those who are most comfortable working outside existing structures on projects to which they have a deep personal attachment

Poets
There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes, Jesus Christ died for nothin' I suppose. Little pitchers have big ears, Don't stop to count the years, Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.
- From “Sam Stone” by John Prine

Poets
Gordon MacKenzie
Orbiting the Giant Hairball

Poets
Gordon MacKenzie
Orbiting the Giant Hairball
“ A pyramid is a tomb.”
“ A tree is a living organism.”

Poets
Things to know about the care and feeding of poets
When you try to protect them, they will distrust you.
They will doubt that you truly understand what they’re talking about. They may be right.
They tend to be less loyal to the company than typical workers, but more loyal to other people.
They don’t play well in the sandbox, if at all.
Sometimes, they completely freak out.
Why bother?
The singular work of poets can change the world.

Pirates
Monty Python

Pirates
"You've got to do something about this dreadful program. It's simply not funny.” -- Tom Sloane, BBC executive
“ By the second series they were wanting to see the programs before they went out. And by the third series ... they wanted to see the scripts before we filmed them.“ -- Terry Jones, Monty Python executive

Pirates
"You can start any (Monty Python) routine and people finish it for you. Everyone knows it like shorthand." -- Robin Williams, annoying American comedian
“ They're comic gods.” -- Eddie Izzard, an English comedian who is less annoying than Robin Williams but who wears annoying clothes nonetheless

Pirates
Things to know about the care and feeding of pirates
They resent attempts to protect them.
They will usually assume that you don’t understand what they’re about to talk about.
They are sometimes surprisingly and fiercely loyal to the company.
They dominate any sandbox, or are willing to die trying.
Sometimes, they self-destruct.

Pirates
Why bother?
They will never settle for the status quo.
They work very hard all the time.
They ask great questions (although sometimes in the form of a complaint rather than a question)

Poet & pirate protection tactics
Keep them away from managers who can’t appreciate them; point them out to ones who can
Translate their work
Over-deliver on giving them credit for it
Praise your poets
Praise must be meaningful and well-timed
Empower your pirates
If it’s somebody else’s call, secure their empowerment
Don’t take negative reactions personally

They are among us
Are you:
More poet than pirate
More pirate than poet
So much more than some silly ass label some joker speaking at the IA Summit is trying to stick to you, in other words not even close to being either a pirate or a poet

They are among us
Who would your rather work with?
A poet
A pirate
Neither, they would both piss me off too much!

They are among us
Who would you rather have working for you?
A poet
A pirate
Neither, let them read their T.S. Eliot and wave their skull and crossbones flag somewhere else!

They are among us
Who has at least one poet or pirate working for them right now?

But enough about me
Your evangelism success and horror stories

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Evangelism101

by Dan Willis

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