Comments on: How to keep audience attention when people are multitasking

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 04:57:45 +0000

Hi Jonathan

That sounds like a great way to start the session. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Olivia

By: Jonathan Gullery

Jonathan Gullery — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 03:56:21 +0000

Was asked to do a presentation on effective meetings. Started by dividing the group in two, giving them each a secret task — one to model the best and the other the worst meeting ever. They went off to plan for 5 minutes, then came back. Only rule was no cursing. I’ve never seen such enthusiasm as they did their respective skits! They howled with laughter at the best and absolute worst behavior. After this the group was completely hooked, and not one person dared even look at their computers, and ALL phones were turned off.

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:18:11 +0000

That’s a great way of putting it, thanks Patrick.

By: Patrick DiDomenico

Patrick DiDomenico — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:43:50 +0000

I agree with the Twitter approach that Scott and Kim mentioned. I usually take it a step further: I display my Twitter handle (@LawyerKM), ask who uses Twitter, and then say, “Good to see so many Twitter users, now I won’t be offended if people are using their devices — I’ll just assume that you’re Tweeting my presentation.” Of course, I say this in a light-hearted, jocular way, but it does two things: (1) makes people conscious of “rude” device usage (e.g., emailing or texting or tweeting unrelated to my presentation), and (2) encourages “good” device usage (e.g., tweeting / blogging about my presentation.

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:04:48 +0000

Great! Delighted it’s going to be useful. Olivia

By: Juli Monroe

Juli Monroe — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:00:56 +0000

This is excellent. I have a friend who is an emcee, and I forwarded this to him. Your last points about what to say to set the expectation can be golden for him.

Thanks!

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:18:52 +0000

Hi Carolyn
Knitting is a great example of a past generation’s secondary activity! Thanks for the link to danah boyd’s rant too.
Olivia

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:13:16 +0000

This reminds me of a story about one of the first female engineering students at my undergraduate university. She went to a Chemical Engineering class with her knitting, which made the professor nervous…but “he soon learned that I could knit and pay attention.”

She graduated top of her class. This was in the 50s.

I liken my web surfing during a presentation to modern-day knitting but try to keep it to looking up confusing phrases or technical terms. If the presenter gets really boring, I get impatient and start taking notes on what he/she could improve, just to keep me awake! Either way, I am behind my screen the entire time, but hopefully not in a distracting matter.

This reminds me of the generational clash described here:

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/07/13/i_want_my_cybor.html

By: Nate Mishaan

Nate Mishaan — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:29:11 +0000

I have had an unpleasant experience with celphones, blackberries, etc. These units have caused extremely audible interference through the sound systems of events that I have teched. It really ruins it for everyone.

By: Derek Slater

Derek Slater — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:35:32 +0000

This one is not for every situation, but another gentle but firm reminder is to say “Please interrupt and let me know if I’m not presenting something clearly, because I know you all are accountable for the information we’re going to cover.”