How to handle a heckler
February 25, 2010
Most hecklers are made, not born. If people don’t feel listened to they will turn into hecklers. So the critical step to avoid making hecklers out of people in your audience is to listen.
At the Presentation Camp in LA last year I facilitated a session on handling a heckler. Lisa Braithwaite’s husband videoed the session, but we didn’t have microphones so the audio is very faint. But you may find it useful, so I’ve included the video at the end of this post.
1. Manage your own emotional state
How to handle a texting audience
January 14, 2010
A reader asked me this question:
Some of us who are 45+ are finding that younger people text and use computers during presentations to the point of rudeness. This happens even when others in the presentation give great evaluations. We think we’ll be seen as “old farts” if we ask them to disengage. How do we bridge this generation gap?
Strip the generation language from this question and this is a question about attention. [Read more]
Why most attempts at audience participation fail and what to do about it
March 25, 2009
Yesterday I had a skype conversation with Twitter follower Todd (@TJList) on how to include audience participation in a presentation. He’s presenting on getting through the economic downturn to an audience of small business owners. Here was his question:
How can I involve my audience in the presentation? I want the audience to feel like it’s a conversation, not like they are being “talked at” for 45 minutes.
Audience participation is hard to get right. That’s because it’s easy to make these mistakes: [Read more]
7 time-saving tips for planning your presentation
March 13, 2009
In my last post, I wrote about why it’s worthwhile to spend time preparing a presentation. But it’s also possible to waste time preparing a presentation, by not going about it in the right way. So here are my 7 time-saving tips to help you prepare a presentation efficiently.
1. Always be preparing
Professional public speakers have always advised aspiring speakers to be collectors of stories. But now also collect images, videos etc which could be useful. That way, when you next have to plan a presentation, you’ll have some resources at your fingertips, rather than having to search from scratch. [Read more]
8 things I learnt about using twitter as a participation tool
March 1, 2009
Today, I presented a session remotely at the Presentation Camp at Stanford University, California. My session was on “How to engage your audience with Twitter” and I tried to do exactly that during my presentation.
Here’s what I learnt from my experience:
1. Design your presentation for Twitter
Is Twitter a good thing while you’re presenting?
February 26, 2009
I’ve recently written two guest posts on Twitter and presenting. On Laura Fitton’s Touchbase blog, I looked at the benefits for the audience and the speaker of people twittering while you speak and how to manage it.
On Chris Spagnuolo’s Edgehopper blog, I went to the next step and explored how you can use Twitter to engage your audience.
Both posts have generated a lot of buzz on Twitter and there’s a ton of comments on the TouchBase blog. There’s many useful points in the comments and I have summarized the main issues below: [Read more]
The 10 steps to asking questions so you get an answer every time
February 7, 2009
Asking questions of your audience is a great way to keep the audience engaged. But asking questions is an art. I asked on Twitter what people found hardest about asking questions that engage your audience:
Lee Potts from Breaking Murphy’s Law “Posing the question in such a way that guarantees someone, anyone, will answer and not leave me hanging.”
Brent Dykes from PowerPoint Ninja “How to recover from a question or series of questions that get crickets (i.e., silence)?”
8 tips for encouraging questions in your presentation
November 27, 2008
Most of us would like people in the audience to ask questions. A lively Q&A session is stimulating and engaging for the audience. But sometimes you ask for questions, and you’re just met with blank gazes back from your audience. It’s a let-down and your presentation ends on a sour note.
Questions from the audience are like young fragile seedlings – they need nurturing. Consider when you’re in the audience – what stages do you have to mentally go through in order to ask a question? It might go something like this:
6 Major Distractions to Eliminate in your Presentation #2
August 11, 2008
Yesterday I talked about 4 environmental distractions which cause people to stop focusing on your presentation.
But it’s also easy to distract your audience by what you say (or don’t say) and by what you show on your PowerPoint slides.
5. What you say (and don’t say)
6 Major Distractions to Eliminate in your Presentations
August 10, 2008
We tend to assume that if we say something in our presentations, people will get it. As if it was a direct brain-to-brain transfer of information.
In the courses that we run, we give a short presentation, and then ask the course participants to complete an exercise based on what we’ve said. When we first started out, we often found that as soon as we got participants started on the exercise, somebody would say “What am I supposed to do here?” We’d said it, but the participant hadn’t got it. We’ve got good at ensuring that participants get it by eliminating distractions.
The human brain is great at getting distracted. We work hard to stay focused but stray thoughts are coming into our minds all the time. This will happen despite your best efforts as a presenter – but you can help reduce the stray thoughts by eliminating distractions. Distractions are anything that cause a person in your audience to think about something different than what you are saying at that moment.
