One of the great points that stayed with me after our last Symposium was a Japanese concept of “Read the Air,” introduced by Yukiko. Emphasizing different non-verbal components of communication, it obliges us to be conscious of our and our interlocutors’ body language and mood, as well as our surroundings. Apparently, this subject has been of some interest to the scientists. It turns out that reading the air is not only something that we do, consciously or not, but also something that affects our physical sensations. There was an interesting NYT article “A Cold Stare Can Make You Crave Some Heat” by Benedict Carey about a scientific analysis of the effect of social rejection or the ‘cold stare’ on people. It was found that when feeling disregarded or dismissed (verbally or not) in a social situation, people perceive a decrease in the outside temperature. Next time you get that coffee or hot chocolate, think whether it’s really a caffeine craving.
Archive for the 'Symposium' Category
The Symposium Blog is up and running!
The Miscommunication: 8th Annual Symposium blog had it’s opening post on June 5th at 3:03pm. For the next few weeks there will be regular posts highlighting different tables at the symposium. I have enjoyed reading through the notes and table discussions and looking through the photographs of the day.
As I worked on setting up the blog, I felt the urge to post every note and conversation and image that happened during the event. It seemed so important to share with all of the participants what had happened and show them what they had been able to accomplish in one day. But I also have been thinking of how this blog should be more than a showcase or even more than a place for us to revisit and comment on our work after the event.
I have been thinking of the blog as a way to continue the Symposium community, which is nearing its 9th year of existence! At the same time I have realized that my pedagogical side is stepping in and I am not sure that having another blogging community out there is enough. Yes, I want more. Is there a way to make it into something that builds momentum and takes us onward and into the next phase of our extended community?
Mary Hocks uses a term — “Hybridity” — which refers to how the web as a medium or channel can be a space for the “interplay” between the visual and the verbal in a structured environment, perhaps that of a blog (Hocks, 2003). More than the hybridity of a blog medium, I am moved towards this notion of interplay where the use of visuals such as design, graphs, images and even MySpace pages can be intertwined with writing, discussion, and blogging to begin building ideas and areas of study for the next symposium. And it certainly seems that much of the discussions at the symposium were about the constant interplay of communication elements and channel and the influence this had on miscommunication. I like very much the idea of interplay in building momentum or knowledge for the coming symposium. That through reading and writing and linking and posting and images and everything else this medium invites us to do, ideas will form, and a sort of collective knowledge will develop.
So maybe the symposium blog could be, as is often the case in an online community, a place where we look and represent what we have said and have thought about an event. But instead of just commenting on each other’s work, we could seek out threads that can be investigated further and areas of reflection that we would want to develop and bring forward in next year’s day-long dialog.
This might start out being chaotic in the beginning and strange for a blog to go in every direction before some sort of collective knowledge can be shaped or directed towards a detailed thesis around the notion of interplay. But as was mentioned by Hillary Miller during the morning discussions at Table II: the idea is to encourage the messiness of the writing process. As it is from this stage that great reflection can begin. So please come to the symposium blog and inter-PLAY!
I was among the group of Fellows who attended the 8th Annual Symposium on Communication and Communication Intensive Instruction, held on May 9th, 2008. Despite the weather, the turnout was great and we saw a lot of lively exchanges of ideas. Esther Dyson’s and Richard Lederer’s Keynotes were interesting and entertaining, and we enjoyed each other’s company at the table discussion and over dinnner afterwards.
This year’s theme was ‘Miscommunication’. In the table discussion, Olga and I were with facilitators Gardner Cambell (Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington) and Ruth-Ellen H. Simmonds (Executive Director, One Stop Senior Services), our own Dennis Slavin and three other professionals (Irwin Dayan, David Sutcliffe and Karen Stevenson). Because we had a good proportion of academics and professionals, we were able to share our experience in the classroom and the workplace, what kind of miscommunication takes place, and why it takes place. Our dicussion somehow centered around the fact that many of us feel like we ‘miscommunicate’ with colleagues because we have little understanding of people that belong to different generational/gender/cultural groups from our own. Just as we did in the symposium, by ‘listening’ to each other’s perspectives and experiences, we learn a little more about effective communication every day. I feel that ‘listening’ is an essential part of communication no less than ‘talking’. Now I should tell my Japanese friends to keep their heads high for their ‘air-reading’ ability.:-)
So this was another interesting experience for me. I would also like to invite comments from other Symposium participants. Please share your experience!
Our intrepid symposium moderator, Scott Kirsner, has a blog.
I am very sad to report that the Schwartz Communication Institute has lost a dear friend. Raymond F. von Dran, Dean emeritus of the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University passed away at the young age of 60 earlier this week. Ray was a Symposium regular who was very influential in the evolution of that event as well as of the Schwartz Institute in general. He facilitated this past year and, as expected, brought his characteristic exuberance and insight to the discussion. Please take a look at the moving tribute to Ray on the School of Information Studies website and his obituary in the Syracuse University News.
The issue of narcissism came up at my roundtable discussion at the BLSCI’s 7th Annual Symposium, “New Rules: Convention and Change in Communication” in April. My table-mates, composed of a mix of people from academia and business, shared their observations regarding students and new employees and their common difficulty with the idea that not everything one has to say is important and with discerning between what is appropriate/relevant in a conversation and what is not. They pondered whether communication in the age of blogging, MySpace, and FaceBook and reduced privacy has become more self-focused, that is, narcissistic: because of shorter attention spans, “people talk more because there are fewer people listening.”
This conversation reflected in part some the views expressed in a recent New York Magazine article on the younger generation’s lack of interest in privacy and their use of the Internet to reveal every and all aspects of their lives. I also wondered out-loud whether there is a relationship was between this cultural trend and our students’ ability to think critically.
Given all this, has the trend of self-revelation and exhibition, blogging-style made us more monologic rather than dialogic — more solipsistic and less communicative?
After this year’s Schwartz Symposium, where I once again served as a moderator, I decided to publish a short paper describing the results of the table discussion in which I participated. Described is the evolution of an idea and the research needs it suggests.
The link to the paper is below.
Channels, Audience Needs, and Communications - The Rise of a Idea.pdf 102K
Videos of the keynote presentations and afternoon plenary session at the 7th Annual Symposium are now up on Baruch’s Digital Media Library (DML). Please have a look. We are working on the video of Bernard Schwartz’s dinner address and should have that up soon.
Alan Webber’s keynote (the transcript is here) and Bernard Schwartz’s dinner address at the 4th Symposium as well as the full program of the 6th Symposium are also up on the DML.
Speaking of the Symposium, have a look at a few reflections on the day’s events here and here.
I was thinking this evening walking to the train about how someone had commented that the moring speaker at the Symposium was “great but did not talk about communication.” I think that’s not quite correct. If we think back to the stories he related, they were all basically about LISTENING, a pretty important part of communicating. In the end listening is probably more than half of communicating. Communicating is not just what we say and how we say it, it’s what we hear and how we’re heard. Think how different BLSCI would be were it’s name “The Bernard L. Schwartz Speaking Institute.”
I’d like to start a space here to discuss last week’s Symposium on Communication and Communication-Intensive Instruction where, hopefully, we can aggregate some feedback and thoughts for the staff which will help them plan next year’s event.
This was my first symposium, and I had a fine time. It’s nice to break up the monotony of our academic day-to-day, to mix with folks from the outside world, and also to get to know some of my fellow fellows better. I thought both Keynotes were good. William Taylor’s talk resonated through our small-group discussion, and I thought it was an effective mixture of presentational models: part book talk, part corporate motivational speech, and part exhibit on public presentation. Chris Anson’s talk was interesting due to his knowledge and polish, but felt a little disconnected to me… I’m not sure that the format of a fireside chat meshes well with a Keynote in this context. Perhaps other folks felt differently.
My discussion group was enjoyable, though we could have used a few more business folks and a finer focus. Everyone was amiable and contributed something to the discussion, but our group didn’t get much further with the questions than the fellows had when we wrote them. That’s ok, since the purpose was to generate dialogue between businessfolk and academics. Much of our group’s talk revolved around the relationship between authenticity and effectiveness in communication. I argued that there was no determined relationship between the two, and that most businesses care less about being “authentic” with their customers than they do about effectively communicating their way into pockets. Authenticity can be a tactic, but communication can be just as effective if the communicator is being inauthentic. In many cases, “effective” communication requires inauthenticity (see: buildup to War in Iraq). The afternoon discussion did not address the question we came up with in the morning, which was: “Given a world with too many forms of communication, how do we create an architecture that ensures that we communicate effectively within our organization?” Perhaps that question was unanswerable, or maybe the answers were obvious.
My final point, which obviously says more about me than anything else: I should have been more prepared for this, given that we’re at Baruch and given the nature of this gathering… but in my many years of graduate school, I’ve rarely been in a room where the big C seemed so far off the table.
By the way… those mini-cheesburgers? Man alive… and grilled to a perfect medium, too. We should have applauded the Chef at the Players Club right after we cheered for Mikhail and Mr. Schwartz.
Recent Comments