3 recent quotes of mine:

"Spark understands the semantic intent of the content in your video."

"We're making slides a first-class citizen - so you'll now be able to see them side by side within the platform - and navigate to any part of the video from the slides directly."

"We're going to be creating an AI avatar of you, the instructor, so that your enrolled learners will have 24/7 access to the virtual you. They can ask any question related to your course material and your AI give them tailor-made responses, based on their individual contexts."

If you're still reading, kudos! Most people would be turned off when they see the word "semantic" in the first line.

And yet, this is how I presented Spark to a new customer just a week ago.

The song only you can hear

There's this game you can play with a friend.

First ask them to sit beside you. Then tell them: "I'm gonna think of a popular song and start tapping to the tune. You need to guess the song."

Since this is just a warm-up, you start tapping to "Happy Birthday." Super simple, right? Anyone can get this!

But you see your friend struggling to figure it out.

It then dawns on you... that the music you can so clearly hear... is in your mind. Not theirs.

I was making the same mistake when speaking to my customer...by using phrases like "semantic intent"

Or asking them to visualize a multi-step workflow in a product they're seeing for the very first time.

Or nudging them to imagine what an "AI avatar" means - when the only "avatar" they've been taught to think of so far is their Whatsapp DP.

SUCCESs

There's a wonderful book called Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. It speaks about how to make ideas stick - like masking tape.

The brothers offer a checklist called SUCCESs and recommend that we use at least a couple of those ideas every time we're trying to communicate a new idea.

SUCCESs: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories

1% knowledge. 99% implementation.

Now, here's the thing: If I already knew about SUCCESs, why did I go ahead and still present the way I did? Using jargon like "semantic intent"?

As my Guru Mahatria says: "1% knowledge. 99% implementation."

Since I haven't practiced "making things stick" enough, it's not second nature for me. Yet.

One minute of show-and-tell

So what did I do? Did I get a second chance?

I reached out to her again - not to re-pitch, but because the math didn't add up: she had seemed unconvinced, and yet she signed up. I also wanted to give her an easy out if she'd had second thoughts overnight.

But here's what happened:

During the conversation, I shared my screen and showed her the "click on a slide and jump to the relevant video section" feature.

She was instantly hooked.

"So, Spark automatically picks up the slides from the video?", she asked.

And that's when it hit me.

Forget masking tape. Most of what I'd said on our previous call had not even stuck like cellophane tape.

But just a minute of show-and-tell connected with her instantly.

She had moved from confused and disconnected to the look of someone who'd just seen something she couldn't unsee anymore.

Her three-hour recording had suddenly become something students could easily scan, search and click through - not something they had to just watch from beginning to end.

Accidental 4.5 out of 6

Had I "accidentally" applied SUCCESs?

• Simple? Yep. Anyone understands what it means to click on something to go somewhere.

• Unexpected? Yeah, seems like it. Based on her comment ("so it automatically gets the slides?!"), there was an element of surprise.

• Concrete? Yep. It wasn't an abstract idea anymore.

• Credible? Yep. She saw it working right in front of her eyes. Seeing is believing.

• Emotional? Maybe. I think there was a sense of excitement when she saw how her three-hour video had suddenly become interactive.

• Story? Probably not. There was no narrative here.

So, how well did I score? 4.5/6.

Not bad. I think the Heath brothers would give me a nod :)

What I'm taking away

• Sonder - the moment when you realize everyone else has their own movies running in their heads too. The birthday tapping game is the same insight in miniature: I could hear the song. She couldn't.

• SUCCESs meets the filter. Our brains filters most of what it encounters. The SUCCESs checklist lines up with how we already decide what sticks.

• Practice. Ideas are worth almost nothing on their own. You have to apply them until they're reflex. This is a note to myself as well :)

Onward!

PS: If you teach on Zoom and care more about students using your material than about sounding cutting-edge on a demo call, reply to this email. I'll set you up with early access to Spark - and show you how you can use it to make your teaching "stick" much better.