Rachel Botsman on obsessing over the first few minutes of virtual presentations

My guest today is Rachel Bostman. Rachel is a world-renowned expert on technology and trust, and author of two bestselling books. Her first book was called “What’s Mine is Yours” which was all about collaborative consumption, and her second book, Who can you trust, explores how technology is transforming trust and what this means for life, work and how we do business. Rachel is a Trust Fellow at Oxford University and has been recognised as one of the “Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company and as one of the 50 most influential management thinkers in the world. She is also the host of the podcast Trust Issues. And where you might have come across Rachel is via her TED talks that have been viewed by literally millions of people.

This is the second time Rachel has been on How I Work. Check out the first interview here.

In this chat, we cover:
  • The biggest challenges for her of working during lockdown
  • Designing virtual experiences
  • How Rachel has iterated her teaching at Oxford to create a great virtual experience for her students
  • The very first thing to get right before delivering virtual experiences
  • How to create the space for learning and thinking in the virtual classroom
  • How to give introverted people a voice in virtual workshops
  • How Rachel has made the switch from face-to-face keynote presentations to virtual ones
  • “Settling” people into the room for virtual presentations
  • How to create great poll questions
  • How Rachel structures a one hour presentation
  • How to finish a presentation so it promotes action
  • On being a teacher versus a preacher

Follow Rachel on Linkedin to get her biweekly newsletter Rethink

Check out her virtual experience design documents here:
– A special edition of Rachel’s Rethink Newsletter on the topic which can be read here.