Will your jargon indicate that you’re an infidel?

Earlier this month at the 45th SIEO/NACE Sun Valley Symposium I heard two examples of jargon that might upset religious sensibilities.

Just before my speech Ken Plaizier, of Emtek, spoke on “A Brief History of Pipeline Inspection.” In the printed program his title had been “The History of Smart Pigging.” In pipeline jargon a pig is a plug that slides through the pipe. One explanation for the term is that it as one type of leather plug slid by it made a squealing sound like a pig. There is Pigging Products and Services Association with a web site which discusses different types of pigs. “Smart pigs” are sophisticated in-line inspection (ILI) tools that sense and record when and where there are imperfections in the pipe. In Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries they are not called pigs because Muslims don’t eat pork. Pigs are not halal (roughly equivalent to kosher), so referring to them would be very offensive.

The final speech at the SIEO/NACE Symposium was by Trent Howard of Total Corrosion Solutions. He spoke on “An Accurate Method to Find and Map Gas Leaks.” Trent described an integrated mobile system mounted on an all-terrain vehicle. It simultaneously detected methane, carbon dioxide, and other hydrocarbons. This system was controlled by a laptop computer equipped with a global positioning system (GPS). Once a map of the pipeline was loaded into the computer the operator could begin his drive. For each leak he found, he could produce a detailed report for management to use to direct repairs.

Trent kept referring to the their system by the acronym LDS (for leak detection system). I think I heard a few chuckles from the audience the first time he used that acronym, because LDS is better known as referring to “Latter-Day Saints.” The web address of http://lds.org will take you to a comprehensive site from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Trent would have been better off if he had used a longer acronym without another common meaning (and a very different association). He might have called their technology a Leak Detecting and Locating System (LDLS).

Jargon and acronyms can carry unintended associations. Back in 2008 Peggy Jordan discussed Why Clarity Counts. She mentioned a client who kept using the term STD to refer to “short term disability” when a more common meaning is “sexually transmitted disease.”

Visual leverage from your big-business associates

At the 45th SIEO/NACE Sun Valley Symposium I heard Jessi Roberts from Northwest RCI, Inc. speak about coatings. The title of her presentation on January 7th was “Polyurea: The good, the bad, and mitigating the ugly.” She began by saying that she was extremely nervous, since this was her first PowerPoint presentation. However, if she had not told the audience we probably would not even have noticed. The lectern was ten feet from the first row, and she looked just fine.

Jessi described polyurea as being a flexible, high-build coating system that can be rapidly spray-applied at temperatures between about -20 and 150 F. She had images illustrating examples of large projects including lining of a canal, a flume, and a 14-acre irrigation pond. The good was that the coating can adhere to concrete, metal or fabric if the surface is properly prepared. The bad was that polyurea will not adhere to a wet surface.

The most dramatic part of her presentation was the last part, about mitigating the ugly. Her firm is certified to apply the entire polyurea blast mitigation line from Life Shield Engineered Systems, which is a division of Sherwin-Williams. Life Shield has spray-applied coatings, and also pre-cast liner panels for protecting both walls and windows.

She played an eye-popping video from Life Shield that contained several high-speed recordings of field tests. The last and most dramatic one was of a test by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). It showed views of how a clear Life Shield window liner first stretched inward drastically, and then rebounded to eject the fragments from the shattered glass. That was a wonderful illustration of the maxim: “don’t just tell me – show me!”

How thin is "extremely thin"?

Explaining how big or small unfamiliar things are can be a challenge. Last July on his blog, Can You Hear Me Up the Back?, Ian Whitworth discussed the Top 10 Presentation Measurement Units. For big things there are some familiar reference objects, like football fields, the equator, or a trip to the moon. For small things there just is the thickness of a human hair.

On January 9, 2010 I spoke for 45 minutes at the 45th SIEO/NACE Sun Valley Symposium. My presentation was “An Introduction to Stainless Steels and Corrosion.” Most of my audience was not familiar with stainless steels or metallurgy. They were very familiar with steel pipelines, organic coatings, cathodic protection, and repair methods.

How do stainless steels work? They are reactive metals – iron alloys containing at least 11% chromium. The surface of a stainless steel reacts with oxygen to form an extremely thin, self-healing, chromium-rich passive film which stops further corrosion. This process is called passivation, and the film is just 10 to 100 atoms thick. Stainless steels are some of the first “smart” materials, although they were invented almost a century ago. You probably have them in your kitchen as cutlery, mixing bowls, and perhaps pots or pans.

If you understand how thin the film is, then you can understand that the surface must be processed meticulously to remove contaminants from fabrication. Just rubbing the surface with a steel wire brush or steel wool can embed enough free iron to interfere with passivation. Typically free iron is removed by immersing the product in a solution of nitric or citric acid, which confusingly also is called passivation. Thicker contaminants like heat tint from welding are removed by a more aggressive treatment called pickling, which uses a solution with nitric acid plus hydrofluoric acid.

I began with a PowerPoint image showing the thickness of my little finger (a centimeter). Then I described how a dime was a tenth of that thickness (0.1 cm). I proceeded down by powers of ten from -1 (0.1cm) to -8 (0.00000001 cm) as is summarized in the table shown above. The thickness of the passive film is roughly a millionth or a ten-millionth of a centimeter (0.0000001 to 0.000001 cm). That is a lot thinner than the “thin candy shell” covering the chocolate in an M & M (about 0.04 cm)!

My use of powers of ten to illustrate thicknesses was inspired by the 1977 Charles and Ray Eames movie Powers of 10.

Tune in to Toastmasters: District 15 Winter Leadership Institute in Boise

This is my 200th post on this blog!

Yesterday morning I attended the semi-annual Toastmasters Leadership Institute (TLI) here in Boise. It was held at the SuperValu corporate offices (formerly the Albertsons headquarters). The primary purpose for a TLI is simply to provide training for club officers filling the following seven roles: President, Vice President- Education, Vice President – Public Relations, Vice President – Membership, Secretary, Treasurer, Sergeant at Arms. A basic TLI is about as exciting as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

This was not just a basic TLI though. It had three general sessions separated by two breakout sessions. The first general session had a wonderful keynote speech on “Communicating in the Social Space” given by Justin Foster from Tricycle (a branding firm in Boise). In the second general session he continued with “Social Media 101: Practical Tips for Implementing Social Media Right Now.” The first breakout session had the usual club officer training, and also a session for prospective or new members on: “So you want to be a Toastmaster.” The second breakout session offered a series of bonus topics:

Social Media: Building Your Club Brand (taught by Justin Foster)

Mentoring for Success (taught by Dave Manning, our current District Governor)

Flawless Planning with Easy-Speak

Advanced Manuals: What’s Right for You?

Moving Up: Taking the Next Leadership Step (taught by Michael Rusnack, a past District Governor)

The final general session had closing ceremonies with door prizes and recognition of the speakers and planning committee (organized by Ruth Romero, from Capitol Club). .

It was an exciting morning - more like a full meal than just a sandwich.

Successful Public Speaking: a series of videos by Dante Mena

His series of 16 brief (one or two minute) YouTube (and eHow) videos is like having a friendly uncle explain what to do, and what not to do. Mr. Mena lives in Budapest, and he wrote the Hungary Adventure Guide. His background also includes acting, and doing voiceovers in Hollywood. I previously referred to his video on body language in a June 11, 2009 post about gestures. The whole series of videos is worth looking at:

1. Audience Comprehension in Public Speaking

2. Audience Involvement in Public Speaking

3. Avoid Anger and Disgust in Public Speaking

4. Avoid Boredom with Topic in Public Speaking

5. Avoid Noisy Places in Public Speaking

6. Avoid Speaking Too Quietly in Public Speaking

7. Avoiding Audience Distractions in Public Speaking

8. Avoiding Distractions in Public Speaking

9. Body Language in Public Speaking

10 Engaging Audiences in Public Speaking

11. Expanding on the Topic of a Speech

12. How to Be a Successful Public Speaker

13. Jokes in Public Speaking

14. Pictures in Public Speaking

15. Props in Public speaking

16. Recovering Audience Attention in Public Speaking

17. Sticking to the Topic of a Speech

Resolve to read less and learn more this year

There is a huge amount of information about public speaking on the Web, ranging from brief blog posts to long articles. Much of it is commercial crap which is not worth reading. How can you sift through this vast “digital sewer” to find anything relevant or useful?

If you search via Google for the quoted phrase “public speaking” you will find roughly 7,000,000 items. When you restrict your search to items posted in the last 24 hours you still will find roughly 115,000 items. Here are six simple steps to follow for more quickly homing in on “the good stuff”:

1. Narrow your search by adding another specific phrase in quotes, like “overcoming anxiety” or “opening your speech.”

2. When you find a potentially interesting item, read the first few paragraphs. Check whether it is written without spelling errors. If spelling was not checked, then it may be someone’s unedited brain dump.

3. Read another few paragraphs. See if the article is written clearly and concisely. If not, then don’t waste any more of your time.

4. Go back to the beginning, and then click on the first link you find. See if you really are just getting a commercial teaser. Are you being invited to buy an e-book, a CD, a DVD, or a course in order to get their juicy insider secrets?

5. Who wrote it? If the item just belongs to “Admin” or “Staff”, then look out! It may be borrowed from elsewhere and carelessly pasted together by unsubs (unknown subjects, as the perpetrators are called on the TV show, Criminal Minds). Look for an “About” or “Bio” tab on the page. Read about the author. Decide if they sound knowledgeable and believable.

6. Don’t just look around on the open web. Go to the web site for your public library, and search in their databases for magazine articles. Use your library card as the key to unlock a smaller but better collection of information. Databases even have subject indexes. Your city, county or state already has paid for access to these materials via your taxes. You don’t have to buy them again on your own.

For example, look at the first three paragraphs from an article in American Chronicle by Sam Chapman on how to Overcome Your Public Speaking Fear:

“There are some people who have no difficulty speaking in public at all. Many others, even if they do not show it, get very anxious when speaking in public. If you are in the latter group, you need to know that you can take steps to Overcome Your Public Speaking Fear (link).

Performance anxiety, panic attacks, stage fright – whatever you chose to call it, it can cause tremendous fear and anxiety in many people. The fear of speaking in public is one of the greatest fears that most people will face.

The kind of anxiety people suffering from a fear of public speaking is the same kind of fear some feel when called on in a classroom or meeting. It can be the same as having to sing or perform in public. Some people have this fear when if people surprise them and sing happy birthday to them. For many people, public speaking fear comes from a fear of embarrassing themselves or being judged or criticized.”

The very first paragraph ends with a link to a site that sells a PanicAway course. Also, the first sentence in the third paragraph is missing the word “feel” after the phrase “public speaking.” Finally, the third sentence has a redundant combination of “when if.” Stop reading and go somewhere else!

212 Degrees – Where inspirational vapor clashes with reality

 

212 Degrees: The Extra Degree is an inspirational book by Samuel L. Parker and Mac Anderson. Of course there is a web site too (and an inspirational two-minute video).

The video has several comparisons showing that in sports there are very small differences between winning big and losing. Those comparisons are real, and perhaps relevant to the rest of us. If they had stopped there, then they would have been fine.

Unfortunately the book instead begins with the following:

“At 211 degrees water is hot. At 212 degrees it boils. And with boiling water comes steam. And steam can power a locomotive.”

“….Raising the temperature of water by one extra degree means the difference between something that is simply very hot and something that generates enough force to power a machine – a beautiful, uncomplicated metaphor that ideally should feed our every endeavor – consistently pushing us to make the extra effort in every task we undertake. 212 degrees serves as a forceful drill sergeant with its motivating and focused message while adhering to a scientific law – a natural law. It reminds us that seemingly small things can make tremendous differences. So simple is the analogy that you can stop reading right now, walk away with the opening thought firmly planted in your mind, and benefit from it the rest of your life.”

To many people that sounds very inspiring. Just a little more effort can bring huge results! The web site also has the catch-phrase: “One extra degree = exponential results.”

Don’t try telling the stuff about steam to engineers or scientists. At best they just will giggle. At worst they will scald you with their derision. For them it is a horribly bad analogy, an incomplete one that does not really add up. Instead it clashes with what they know about thermodynamics, and how water actually behaves.

That metaphor and “scientific law” confuses temperature and heat. How much added heat it does it really take to both bring a gram of water from 211 degrees to 212 degrees, and then to make it all boil away – to turn it from liquid to vapor?

Heating the liquid from 211 to 212 degrees takes only 2.342 Joules (the specific heat times the temperature difference). One degree F is 0.555 degree C, and the specific heat is 4.2159 Joules per gram degree C.

But, boiling it away takes adding another 2257 Joules (the heat of vaporization). You need to add another 964 times as much heat before you can turn it all into steam. Although it’s only one degree more, it takes adding much more heat to finish the job. And heat is equivalent to work. There really is no huge difference achieved with just a little more effort.

If instead you begin with the water at room temperature, 68 F, and heat it to 212 F, it only takes 335 Joules. Then you just need to add about another 6.74 times more heat to turn it all into steam. Tom Lambert pointed this out last year in a scalding blog post.

So the uncomplicated metaphor in the 212 degree book left out a huge part of the effort required to reach the goal. It is simply…wrong. The video says that: “…sometimes we need to sweat the small stuff.” Wrong! We always need to sweat the small stuff.

Boil some water, sit back, and have cup of nice hot tea. Consider the huge gap between an incomplete analogy and physical reality.

Mr. Parker since has written another motivational book called Smile & Move. If you do motivational speaking, then I strongly suggest you consider that one. You are now aware. Don’t steam people up by repeating a bad analogy!

Speaking of bad, there also is a much briefer (and only slightly obscene) parody video called 32 Degrees – the Extra Degree. Happy New Year!