When presentations become a party game

0:00Discussion keeps the world turning. This is Round Table. You're with us on Round Table. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Steve Hatherley with Feifei and Yushan. And coming up, you walk into a room. There's a stage. Someone hands you a presentation, but the problem is you've never laid eyes on it before. The slides are nonsense. The crowd is waiting, and it's your job to just keep talking. Embaging, Shanghai, and a handful of other Chinese cities, this is not a nightmare. It's a night out. It's a game that flips everything you know about professional presentations on its head. And once you hear why people keep coming back, who knows, you might actually be interested yourself. Don't forget that you can find us at Round Table China on Apple Podcasts, and also don't forget that we really do enjoy hearing from you. So you can send us an email or a voice note with anything that might be on your mind,

1:00anything that you want to discuss that we discuss here on the show. Here's how you do that Round Table podcast at qq.com. And now let's dive into our second story today. Talking nonsense with a ppt, a PowerPoint presentation. I said before the break, I'm very curious to learn about this. That one peaked my interest. That's why I chose it as the example how to take over your neighborhood with the help of a robot vacuum cleaner. But this one we introduced, it sounds like what? What are you talking about? It's kind of difficult to understand. It is. It's kind of difficult to understand in the first place, but it's actually just a game. It's just for fun. It is just for fun. But I want to talk about this a little bit later. I think there are real valuable skills that you can take away from this kind of silly, fun, unique experience. Let's start with what it's all about because on the surface, it might be a little bit difficult to understand. Yeah. So the name in Chinese is called talking nonsense with a ppt with a PowerPoint, but in English, it's called PowerPoint Karaoke.

2:03But it's essentially the same thing. It's just a improv game built around a PowerPoint presentation. So most of the time, the presenter, he, more herself, are not necessarily preparing their slice themselves, but instead it was handed to them. So they have no idea what's in the different slice. And these slice are built completely unrelated with unrelated content, not unrelated pictures, charts, memes, classical tests, or advertisement. And the job of that presenter is to make sense out of the chaos that the slice creates. Of course. Yes. And also sometimes a theme doesn't make sense at all. Yeah. And this is taken off around China in various cities, Beijing being one of them. It's become a social activity for people to do. Yeah. I don't understand this at all because here in Beijing, there's one participant who was asked to explain how to sell Beijing daughter, which is a traditional Beijing drink made

3:07a fermented soy drink. Mom beans. Made out of mung beans. It's sour and it's not really that pleasant. But it's a signature dish for Beijing. Yeah, not even for us, but anyway. But yeah, your job is to explain this whole product, the Beijing daughter, and sell it to aliens from the three-body trilogy. So three-body problem, you know, is the Chinese sci-fi work. And inside there are aliens. So imagine that alien coming from this sci-fi stories context. And yeah, go ahead, try to sell the daughter. So. Or do you make the sale? Yeah. So Beijing, I said many other cities too, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xinjiang, Hongzhou. This is a thing where people gather. They'll gather in a public space. I don't know what types of public spaces we're talking about. And libraries, bars, or just the small, I think the venue is part of a stand-up comedy

4:08and the little theaters. And that's the idea. So yeah, let's use like a stand-up comedy theater, for example, a little tiny space where you've got seats for maybe, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 people, something like that. And then there's a stage and you go up on the stage and you have to give this PowerPoint presentation. So it kind of, it's very much emulates a work situation, except there's two key factors you mentioned. One, you have no idea what you're going to be presenting. And two, they make no sense at all. And it's not a team building exercise, it's not a career progression exercise, it's all about being spontaneous and being in the moment and just having as much fun as you possibly can. Why do you think that, what are some other examples just so we can get a clearer picture here? Yeah, so when our editor gave me this topic, I was so excited.

5:10Cats have mastered the anti-gravity technology. Go through with it, you can make sense out of it. So the PowerPoint slides are in a way that each slide doesn't have anything to do with the slide before it and the slide after it. So here is how it goes, first of all, me as the participant, for example, I need to kind of use high-speed camera data like I go deep into the science, pretend this is an academic speech of mine and tell people that, okay, here's the high-speed camera data that goes as fast as 10,000 frames per second. And we use that to actually prove that cats can float. This is part of our experiment and what we found was that the floating of a cat lasts about not 0.3 seconds and that actually happened. I'm faking it. Yeah, but I need to preserve people. You're acting like it's real. And people are not just going to this. They're paying for it. Yeah, surprisingly.

6:10Mm-hmm. Yes, in some places like In Beijing and Shanghai, people, some of these PPT nonsense events can charge around 100, 200 yuan, which is about 14 to 28 US dollars. Pretty expensive. For a ticket. And people can sign up either you as a performer yourself or as the audience who watch somebody trying to make sense out of nonsense. And they are also competitions on some level and even the order of performance is usually decided by lottery. So the participants, the performers or the presenters will definitely have no idea what they're talking about. And the performers, you say performers, but they're not really performers. They're just people like you and I. They're just there. They're just willing to be the person on the stage, which I think is really kind of a fun thing. Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned that this is something that started not hearing China. Yeah, yeah, it's from Germany back in 2005.

7:10You mentioned it already, right? PPT karaoke. Yeah. I think it's kind of the same concept here. Why has this become, do you think, a thing? I really kind of love, I love this. I love it because office work in China or anywhere can be very kind of quiet and you don't get it a lot of opportunity to talk to a lot of people during the day. You don't get a lot of opportunity to show your personality during the day. Do you think that there's any connection between that here or not so much? Yeah, totally. This is a good way for especially office workers who actually rely on PPT power points as part of a really important element during their day to day work. So for them, this is really just a show off. Like I do PPT every day in front of my colleagues and leaders and yeah, like company employees. And then all of a sudden, my skill of reading off or presenting things can become something

8:14that people can just laugh about. And me, myself, enjoying the process of presenting rather than seeing this as part of a job of my work and being so different serious about things. What do you think, Fei Fei? I also think it's kind of a glue for socializing because when I checked overseas, not here in China, how people, young people are utilizing their power point karaoke's. Their format can be slightly different from the Chinese versions because for instance, you can find a lot of websites in English at least that sell these kind of packages. For example, 20 US dollars for four different themed slides with each decks having 10 slides at least. And they are sort of organizing that slide as they give you a theme, for example, what I do at work. And they give you nine very random photos and you as the presenter at a party because most of this slides will be presented at a party to make sense from a photo of an elephant

9:15to the next one of 11 people playing soccer together. And then to the next one that is showcasing some of ECG graph and then to another geef of a collection of poetry. So try to make sense of that. And you have to draw the line between all. Yeah, thinking in a party or somewhere or she's re-embeging or a stand up comedy. Seeing someone that is trying to make sense and staying as calm as they can can be the social glue here. It's like an acting improv class in a sense, the improvisation where you just kind of have to make it up as you go. But to be fair, making it up as you go sometimes is a part of a work presentation too. Yep. You're right. So yeah, there's the social aspect. I agree with that. I think it's great you get a community of like-minded people together who are just there to have a really good time and support each other too. I doubt people who are giving presentations at the end of it if it wasn't that funny or

10:18whatever. I doubt people are boo. I doubt people are doing that. But do you think beyond the social aspect and beyond the improvisation and the fun and the comedy, do you think there's anything else really useful to take away from these types of experiences? I do because I think the first time I ever heard of something like this like P.P.T. Nonsense talk was not really in any scenario of performance or presentation. It's actually in a school's classroom. The first time I saw it was a clip uploaded perhaps by a teacher that a student wearing school uniform. So apparently that's a student and apparently that boy he was prepared instead of just thrown at of an PowerPoint. He was really enthusiastic about putting each slide in and try to make sense and put a line, a logic line of it even though there are none. He's just drawing points and he was so passionate that his whole body movement was flying around in front of the screen. See this?

11:19See that? That's why this works. And everybody was laughing. Wow. Like that's the context. So you see if it's in the classroom then there has to be something that the teachers were at least the organizers are hoping for the students to grab which I believe is just a spontaneity of catching words and the improvisation skill that you probably wouldn't think that you have were in need of in the first place. Also think when people are in their improv state of mind they're more passionate. Yeah. Compared with when you have your PowerPoint slides prepared you knew exactly where you're talking about you sort of rehearsed it a million times before you actually presented because when you are in that mode you're always thinking about okay I'm finishing up this one when is the next one? What about the next one? But when you are in that improv state I think people can be more passionate your body language, your body posture can be more open. Maybe your voice will be louder and that is sort of on some level unleashing yourself

12:24on the stage. That's really good. That's really good. Yeah, you don't have to be so strict and formal and serious. Yeah, that boy was jumping like a monkey. Yeah, I think there's even more to take away. I think the skills required for a silly presentation can help you in your real presentations because you have to number one you have to learn how to think on your feet. If you're giving a real presentation and all of a sudden something goes wrong with your computer or the slides are in the wrong order well what's the best thing to do? Maybe make a little joke in that moment. This type of scenario where you have to consistently suddenly think of jokes it puts pressure on that part of your brain, that creative part of your brain to be able to come up with that kind of stuff. That's one example. But I think to just the comfort level of standing in front of a group of people and ready to take on whatever is built come up.

13:25Yeah, I mean for a lot of people who are really shy or because presentations are very much anxiety inducing things and people get really, really nervous about it and I understand that. If you are one of those people I think I would highly recommend going to an event like this because you got to get over that fear and if you can go out to a bar or a library or wherever and stand in front of a group of strangers and act like an idiot for a couple of minutes trying to think of how am I going to connect these things. Maybe the next time you go to the office and you're fully prepared maybe you'll have that comfort level. I really believe we can make that argument. Yeah, because we also have some office workers there is a consultant who works with sustainability yet she and the environmental reports. He deliberately said he will participate in this kind of events so that he can be more ready when he is making his presentation at workplace so that because when he is presenting

14:31his work power points to clients most of the time you will be posed with a lot of very difficult questions. You need to know how to stay calm, confident and think clearly about what you can answer to this very difficult question. Well, this just strikes me. I think as Chinese young people there is one more very important takeaway we can grab from this kind of experience is how to make a good joke. It's not every one of us grow up allowing to do something like that to publicly present the funny side of you. Basically speaking, especially for nowadays workplace young people I don't know about in other countries but here in China we're expected to be the adult, to be able to show your professionalities rather than the less serious side of you. So if you can just organically harness the power of being able to just lip in a little bit of a funny side of the things while be able to professionally present what you are there

15:32for. And it's only going to elevate up your own skills and your whole personality and stuff. Yeah, public speaking is something that on some level I think Chinese classrooms start to catch up right now because in the past we don't really have anything about public speaking. Precisely. And when it comes to speaking in a really public and facing a lot of audiences you need certain charisma to really deliver your messages. And I think in the past most of the time a lot of people be staring at your script and your head is sort of leaning down and you lost contact with all the rest of the audience. You don't know what they're thinking if they're catching up at all and people start to fall into sleep or leave. But now I think with either an event like Nonsense Powerpoint or at least some other chances of just speaking publicly, deliver your message, making eye contact, making a few jokes, harmless is something that is very, very useful not only in daily life in workplace.

16:35Yeah. In a lot of different scenarios. Yeah, I wholeheartedly support this one 1000%. But would I do it? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I'm too scared. How to explain your cast can grasp anti-file. Oh, you know what? Because at the bottom of each cat paw there's a little bit of fur. And that fur can act really importantly in this because based on fake quantum physics, cat paw elastic fibers create quantum entanglement with the ground generating anti-gravity waves and that's how cats fly. That takes a lot of skill to know the vocabulary in the first place, right? Yeah, I don't know. I'm so comfortable sitting here and looking at a camera and talking to an audience that's on the other side of the camera. But I'll admit, for many years, standing on a stage in front of hundreds of people or

17:40thousands of people was absolutely terrifying to me. I used to shake. I used to shake. And so, so naturally happened. Have you tried to pretend everybody else sitting in the audience or pumpkins or cabbages? We say in Chinese. Oh, no. Everybody on the audience see their just cabbages, cabbages, cabbages, mix each other. It always stayed with me, you know, for the first five minutes of any time I had to do that, I was just terrified. And then finally, I just said, yeah, whatever. And that came from just confidence. So with this type of thing, the more you do it, if you go a couple of times, three, four, five times, then you're just going to realize like it's not that big a deal and it's not that serious. But I will say this, I've been on a stage in front of about 5,000 people and I've been on a stage in front of about 25 people. It is a lot more terrifying to stand in front of 25 people than it is 5,000 people. Because when it's 5,000 people, you don't see any individuals.

18:44You see a wave of people. When it's 25, you can see people looking at you like, oh, you have more clothes. It's just like, oh my gosh, they don't like me. Why don't they like me? So that's why I think a lot of actors actually said, performing a smaller theater is more intimidating and difficult than performing the larger theater. Because you can hear individual people responding. And somebody will call you. Yeah, inevitably you'll hear someone like, oh dear. Anyway, all right, well there you have it. Maybe it's for you. Or like I said, if you're that type of person who feels a little nervous about standing up in front of your coworkers or your bosses or your clients and delivering a presentation, this could be the perfect idea to kind of get you out of your shell. If you do it, get in touch with us and let us know how it goes around table podcasts at qq.com. All right, that'll do it for today's edition of Round Table. Thank you for listening. I'm Steve Hatherley for Feifei and Yushan.

19:46We ask you to come back again next time. Bye-bye.