How To Become a Storytelling Steward Using Gamification & Graphic Novels (Comics)
If someone asked you to explain the benefits of #Containers / #Kubernetes as though you were speaking to a child, do it in under 2 minutes & guarantee said kiddo’s comprehension, could you do it?
I was tasked recently with doing the same thing by my COO using Machine Learning as the main talking point . To elucidate, I decided to pose the same question to several peers who graciously entertained this whim ‘o mine. While they provided technically correct explanations’, often, they parked their response somewhere between boredom-block and theoretical thoroughfare. Yawn!
What those very intelligent practitioners failed to remember was this was NOT the latest round of stump-the-chump; that the goal was to explain Machine Learning in a way that a child could grok without “adult-splaining” / “grownup-eze” or other explanatory methods – Add to this, the goal of keeping the child engaged for the full 2 minutes –> well, shoot, ++ to you, dear reader turned supreme storytelling savant if you made that happen. While we are at it, why not add the ability to explain ML while avoiding the dreaded “eye gloss over” affect that most listeners dawn when tuning out their brain. This ‘Charlie Brown’ <whoah whoah whoah> adult vernacular riposte is nearly always reflected back to the speaker via those truth telling eyes of yours, enabling the Edgar Allen Poe in us all. Huh? What I mean is the tell-tale Pavlovian heart response to any “Data Science-based” summarization, in my experience.
Instead, I described two scenarios involving exotic fruit –> the 1st, included the name for each of those curious fruits aka labels which was the basis for her being able to label them on demand accordingly. The 2nd scenario, also involved exotic fruits BUT the difference was that she was NOT provided any names ahead of time yet still was tasked with naming said items – And for those data scientists reading this, naturally, were metaphors for supervised and unsupervised learning.
Originally, I had prepared a similar talk for a ML centric presentation I was set to give to a community based data science event (later shared on this blog) – It contains about 90% comics / image iconography instead of laborious text per slide & was received incredibly well. In fact, when delivered to a 200+ audience, it was met with much applause and higher than normal attendee survey satisfaction scores. Simplicity & pacing; Remember, an image speaks 1000 words and to a child who often learns experientially / visually, well, it becomes the storytellers handbook to the hive mind of children everywhere :).
By the way, you can stop me next time when I diverge so sharply from the path.
But now we are back –> putting to bed my thorough digression & pulling you back to my 1st sentence above:
If someone asked you to explain the benefits of #Containers / #Kubernetes as though you were speaking to a child, do it in under 2 minutes & guarantee said kiddo’s comprehension, could you do it?
This awesome comic/bedtime story is one way to answer with a resounding YES ! Meet Phippy & Zee and follow their adventures as they head off to the Zoo: Phippy Goes To The Zoo_A_Kubernetes_Story: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/phippy-goes-to-the-zoo/en-us/
Musings on ML, Deep Learning & AI 