Good morning!

I went to a conference this week, and I saw one of the best speakers I’ve ever seen, and she is a woman so you get to enjoy her amazing work this Friday as well. Elizabeth Stokoe’s research is on social interaction – the patterns in what people say and how they say it, what patterns are expected and what happens when they break down. What’s really exciting is the richness of her examples. I didn’t go to that conference expecting to hear any of, e.g., police suicide negotiations (it worked out okay btw) or the end of a relationship or enquiries into buying windows, and I certainly wouldn’t have expected to have learned as much as I did from each of those.

You might notice that I don’t feature video very often in Fem Friday, the reason is that I don’t particularly enjoy watching video so I don’t usually have much video to recommend. That being said! If you like me do not like video, I recommend taking a lunchtime to properly watch a couple of these videos of Professor Stokoe's talks as the visuals are important:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtOG5PK8xDA

The above is her TEDx (TEDx Bermuda!) talk, there are more from different contexts which – if you get into this – might also be interesting to you:

A longer, more academic talk at the Royal Institution

Another wee primer for Wired

On which note! I spoke at the same conference and really enjoyed the experience. If you are organising a conference in Bermuda, feel free to invite me. I will probably say yes. If you similarly like to, or have to, talk and present, enjoy Alice’s blog posts on how to do this well. I really like the point on “power quotes”, which is something I’ve hitherto not thought about systematically enough:

http://alicebartlett.co.uk/blog/how-to-do-ok-at-slides

Happy talking,

Alex.