Tips for my upcoming memory seminar?

General Memory Chat
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Hello, I’ve been practicing these memory techniques for a while; quite frankly I have been very inspired by the memory masters I have watched on youtube and talked to on these forums. Well I’d like to give a little back to my college, and try teaching them how to use these techniques for themselves.

I was wondering if you could give me any tips or guidelines you think will be important, as this is the first memory seminar I’'ll give. I am hoping to have somebody record it so I can upload it to youtube afterwards.
Here is the outline I’ve come up with so far:

Memory Demonstration Tricks
Tutorial topics
Needed: Power Memory Demonstrations for University Students
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The presentation looks good, but instead of showing your skills as the core, why not get other people to demonstrate how it works.

I wrote about this a little in this post reply to someone else holding a seminar:

People are a lot more likely to be amazed and implement the techniques if you have them do it then if you play wizard.

In fact, I’ve taught memory techniques dozens of times in live settings and never give a demonstration longer than reciting the alphabet backwards or perhaps reciting a quick poem.

Why?

Because it doesn’t really impress anyone that much. Besides, I could have done it all by rote.

The real magic happens when I’ve got non-believers reciting the alphabet backwards in less than 15 minutes. Usually there are one or two people who resist through negativity or they just need more time to understand, but 90% are always able to do it. That’s real magic and that persuades people to master their memory more than any demonstration from me.

I should add that I’ve also done this by having people memorize 13 cards (a fourth of the deck). However, I’ve found this not nearly as effective as the alphabet. Not everyone is familiar with cards and there are actually better ways to memorize cards that require a bit longer to teach.

I hope this helps and that you’ll let us know how you do!

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I agree.
I have started up a memory club at the high school I teach at. Now, selling a ‘memory club’ to up to 800 12-18 year olds is a tough ask. My goal was to get 3-4 kids.
I started by asking them to imagine a dream like sequence (which was accompanied by visuals). This sequence outlined the first ten decimals of pi. They, of course, did not know this.

I then moved on to other things like why I am starting the club up, who it is for and how it can help. At the end, I ask the group (I did this to each year level assembly) how many students knew the first the decimals of pi. The number of hands ranged from 0 to about 4 (out of a group of around 110 per assembly).
I then tell them that I think they do know it and that almost everyone in the room knows it. Silence then builds as more and more realise that I taught it to them without them knowing. So I ask them to relive the dream sequence from the start.
In chorus, they all call out the numbers. I had over 30 people show up to the first meeting, as ell as 5 staff.

I agree with Met, make them amaze themselves. If you do it, the ‘freaky’ or amazing behaviour seems more attributed to something about you than anything they can do. There is room to communicate what you have achieved, especially if you put into context where you started.

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metivier & danmanisa

That’s a really neat idea, it does seem best to let them amaze themselves as that will certainly help them start to dream about all the ways they might start using the techniques in their life. I suppose I will revise the part where I do a big demonstration, and I will make it smaller and focus more on helping them to so some memory feats for themselves.

I will spend the next few days considering how I might do this, the pi and abc ideas sound pretty cool. By the end of the seminar I want all of them to have an idea about association and how to start using the journey and link methods in their own life. Also I will try to give them tips on making journeys and so forth.

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Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

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So I redid the structure of my seminar and I was hoping you’d take a quick look. I shrunk the demonstration down, and I made sure to bring somebody else up to learn the list for themselves after I briefly explain the linking method and w/e. I’m hoping to think most of the filler stuff in during the show but this is the overall structure:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2lAdAe-OnNyWHJ4V3VfRmRuNEk/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks for letting me know what you think, and I will also make sure to upload a youtube video of the seminar if I can find someone to record it.

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Looks good.
One suggestion though. While I know that you are delivering this to college students (I hope my Aussie/US translation of college is correct, that’s like 18+ isn’t it?) I have had quite a few difficulties communicating detailed systems to 12-16 year olds.

I would suggest that you not go through and have them work too much on too many systems. You do’t want to overwhelm them and have them confuse systems together, or have them think that it seems like all too much. Many people new to memory techniques often misunderstand that associations and loci are all things they already know.

I have taught Loci for over a decade and EVERY session (17/18 year olds and 15 year olds) someone complains that now they have to remember MORE things, like the rooms i their house. They fail to see the connection straight away.

I’d show and explain a more general concept, using one major example for them to ‘be the wizard’ as you said, and then perhaps very small examples to show the others. You want them to see that it is not that hard, and that the payoff is worth the little bit of a mental effort at the start.

If you have them understand the PAO and Loci systems (which are different enough and can be used across things like cards, numbers and dates…etc…) the you can use it over and over to show small demonstrations. EG, 3-6 cards, 6-10 numbers etc…if you explain the theory well enough, people will get the point without getting overwhelmed. It is irrelevant what the 2 of clubs, 7 of hearts and Ace of spades is to them as they will need a lot of time to develop that system. But if you can show what your examples are (no real need to explain HOW you got there yet) and how different combinations of these cards produce fantastically vivid and unusual images, then you will get laughs and it will make sense.

I found that my card system has multiple systems (EG all 7’s are cricket players…why? I’m not sure, they just are and it worked so I stuck - yet I use initials for many others!) and when I have tried to explain them, I am greeted by confused looks.

Of course, you can ignore all of this, I’m just typing as I think of things. My experience in education, though, would recommend that you let them experience something themselves fairly early on (unless it’s a very short presentation) and then explain the key, core components. The show the components at work in other situations. You may struggle to sell it if you show that there are loads of systems. That is too much work for most people.

Give them a taste, Once they experience that they can do it, they may want and be willing to learn more. That’s what happened to me. I had NO intention of memorising binary numbers and random images. But once I learned my first deck of cards, I was hooked.

Sorry about the thesis!!! Good luck and I hope I helped somewhat.

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Welp tomorrow is the day lol… I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a bit nervous

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Good luck! You’ll be doing great!

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You’ll be fine!

I guess it’s too late, but I think danmanisa’s advice is dead on!

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Thanks Metivier, means a lot! Means what I have been doing and thinking is hopefully on the money.

So how did you go Cobra? Jot down what went well and what you would change next time if you had the chance. I’m sure people will find it useful for similar things.

I did forget the age old problem that you learn pretty quickly in teaching. Time can go WAY faster than you intend and you find you can’t fit in what you planned. Even with adults, if you think something will take 10 minutes, it will more likely take 20!

Can’t wait to hear how it went.

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Here’s the unedited footage of the seminar… i’m not happy with certain parts of it, but i’m being fair to myself by realizing this is the first time i ever did something like this before

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZy3o3fKMFk part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB20jM-v8LM part 2

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I will try to check a bit of this out later. What do you feel went well/not so well?

Trust me, it takes loads of experience (like with anything) and perhaps a certain natural flair (or very clever structuring) to be able to speak effectively in front of a crowd. My philosophy is that you start with a joke or a surprise. This engages people, makes them like you and they relax, especially if they are sceptical.

I saw about thirty seconds (I don’t have time right now) and you speak clearly and at a good pace, so that’s a winner right there. Nice one.

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Well there was a lot of buzz chat after the show which impressed me, people were actually talking with each other and sharing their experience of memorizing the list.

I guess one of the things I didn’t like was that towards the middle I could have been a little more interactive, also when I was initially memorizing the list for people I forgot the second item during recall which sort of embarrassed me… That was my bad though, my visualization for number 2 wasn’t very memorable or imaginative.

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I watched the first couple minutes. Two things I can recommend; Practice beforehand a couple times, and try to remove filler speech (um, yea, so). Other than that, good.

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Here is an idea I once used when I gave an intro class about mneumonics to a class in school (the idea came from a friend). At the start I told them that by the end of the lecture they would have such powerful memories that they would remember this lecture off by heart. When I taught the link method, I gave a seemingly random list of words and taught them how to memorize it. And in the end I reveled that the list was actually my way of remembering the lecture, and each “image” was a different part of it. So lo and behold, they all went home knowing the entire lecture off by heart :slight_smile:

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Very nice.