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> The audience cannot care about your work until they understand the ‘value proposition’, to use still more contemporary capitalist jargon. Hard disagree. It

> The audience cannot care about your work until they understand the ‘value proposition’, to use still more contemporary capitalist jargon. Hard disagree. It is easy to imagine a problem that just sounds FUN.

spicyusername 1y ago
Then "fun" is the value proposition.
- JohnKemeny 1y ago
  But then the claim is meaningless.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    No; why would it be? Not everything is fun. Fun is one more reason why I might care, but it's not automatically true. You have to show me that I'm going to have fun. If you can't show me why it's fun, or why it's relevant in some other way, then I'm out. (And you don't have very long to do it, either...) [Edit to reply to tikhonj, because I'm rate limited: The "value proposition" is what makes it valuable to the listener. Why should they give you their attention and time? Value is "anything that makes people interested in what you're telling them", as opposed to all the things that don't make them interested. Since the "don't make them interested" set is not empty (far from it!), then no, it's not a tautology.]
    - tikhonj 1y ago
      It's "meaningless" because if you broaden out the definition of "value" to "anything that will make people interested in what you're doing", the advice turns into a tautology.
      - jszymborski 1y ago
        It's still helpful to remind people that an audience will not care about what you are talking about until you tell them, in any way, why they should. So describing a fun problem is implicitly telling the audience why they should listen.
      - kd0amg 1y ago
        And yet a lot of speakers still seem to need that self-evidently true statement pointed out to them. Tautological advice isn't necessarily bad or useless, especially for beginners.
derangedHorse 1y ago
One can argue there’s a value proposition inherent in solving an interesting problem. It reminds me of the paper on optimal tip to tip efficiency: https://ia800308.us.archive.org/32/items/pdfy-tG1MuMpwvrML6QD0/228831637-Optimal-Tip-to-Tip-Efficiency.pdf https://ia800308.us.archive.org/32/items/pdfy-tG1MuMpwvrML6Q... https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/Optimal_Tip-to-Tip_Efficiency https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/Optimal_Tip-to-Tip_Ef...
IAmBroom 1y ago
To you. These rules are not, "Skip one and you'll lose the whole audience." They are, "Do this and you'll grab an optimum amount of attention and retention."

spicyusername 1y ago

Then "fun" is the value proposition.

JohnKemeny 1y ago
But then the claim is meaningless.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  No; why would it be? Not everything is fun. Fun is one more reason why I might care, but it's not automatically true. You have to show me that I'm going to have fun. If you can't show me why it's fun, or why it's relevant in some other way, then I'm out. (And you don't have very long to do it, either...) [Edit to reply to tikhonj, because I'm rate limited: The "value proposition" is what makes it valuable to the listener. Why should they give you their attention and time? Value is "anything that makes people interested in what you're telling them", as opposed to all the things that don't make them interested. Since the "don't make them interested" set is not empty (far from it!), then no, it's not a tautology.]
  - tikhonj 1y ago
    It's "meaningless" because if you broaden out the definition of "value" to "anything that will make people interested in what you're doing", the advice turns into a tautology.
    - jszymborski 1y ago
      It's still helpful to remind people that an audience will not care about what you are talking about until you tell them, in any way, why they should. So describing a fun problem is implicitly telling the audience why they should listen.
    - kd0amg 1y ago
      And yet a lot of speakers still seem to need that self-evidently true statement pointed out to them. Tautological advice isn't necessarily bad or useless, especially for beginners.

derangedHorse 1y ago

One can argue there’s a value proposition inherent in solving an interesting problem. It reminds me of the paper on optimal tip to tip efficiency: https://ia800308.us.archive.org/32/items/pdfy-tG1MuMpwvrML6QD0/228831637-Optimal-Tip-to-Tip-Efficiency.pdf https://ia800308.us.archive.org/32/items/pdfy-tG1MuMpwvrML6Q... https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/Optimal_Tip-to-Tip_Efficiency https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/Optimal_Tip-to-Tip_Ef...

IAmBroom 1y ago

To you. These rules are not, "Skip one and you'll lose the whole audience." They are, "Do this and you'll grab an optimum amount of attention and retention."