• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Datadoodle

  • Subscribe
  • About Datadoodle and me
  • Feedback
  • Special projects
Home » How one keynoter distracted everyone from breakfast

How one keynoter distracted everyone from breakfast

February 28, 2008 by Ted Cuzzillo

I was half asleep as the TDWI keynote warmed up early last Thursday morning. Bob Paladino is not a bad speaker, but at first the good scrambled eggs and coffee were better. Then he got into the Southwest Airlines story, and I looked up.

The five guys at my table also looked up. They picked up the handouts for the first time and followed along.

The Southwest story is a little old by now. TDWI’s muffins were at least fresh. But Paladino was telling stories, and that won out over the muffins.

It’s all about storytelling.

Does the habitual obscurity make anyone sound smarter? If you’re dumb it might. But if you want to deliver information, suggestions, products, ideas, insights, and god help you a blog, it’s best to be accessible. Stories do it.

Oh, one more thing. The co-keynote speaker followed and had no stories. One by one, several people around me suddenly seemed to remember the muffins, and they stood up.

Filed Under: storytelling Tagged With: communication, events, stories, storytelling 1 Comment

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Karen N. Johnson says

    March 12, 2008 at 6:40 am

    datadoodle:

    I happen to be an independent software tester – currently working on a data warehouse project and interested in metadata tools etc. I also happen to be interested in storytelling and have been investigating, practicing and studying storytelling – as it relates to business use – especially as a means of communicating product information and project status. You may find my recent blog interesting: http://www.testingreflections.com/node/view/6700

    Karen

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

smarter cities & data narrative

Two recent “storytelling” tools for public audiences Toucan spoonfeeds data’s insight while Juicebox cultivates data skills

The data-shy among us have two friends in the software business. One a few years old and one new this year. Nashville, Tennessee-based Juice Analytics … [Read More...] about Two recent “storytelling” tools for public audiences Toucan spoonfeeds data’s insight while Juicebox cultivates data skills

...and still more

  • This is Datadoodle
  • Civic tech projects need storytellers
  • Democratic pollster: Hillary campaign’s data malpractice
  • Narrative and analytics: brothers
  • Malcolm Gladwell: why oral data’s different

More Posts from this Category

Copyright © 2025 · eleven40 Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

  • Home
  • About Datadoodle and me
  • 2004 to 2019
  • Contact Ted
  • Subscribe