Posts tagged as:

Audience

7 ways to keep audience attention during your presentation

November 18, 2009

Keeping audience attention is more important and more difficult than grabbing audience attention. A reader emailed me: “What can I do to keep the audience’s attention through the whole of my presentation. There are always people who don’t seem to be listening.” A one-way presentation is one of the worst possible ways of transferring information [...]

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What you need to know before your first presentation

July 9, 2009

Giving your first presentation or speech is daunting. I’ve worked with many new presenters and here’s the advice that has made the most difference to them. 1. Content is king Your audience is there for what you are going to say. Not how you say it. This is good news for you as a new [...]

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How to tweet during a presentation

June 30, 2009

The latest academic research on Twitter and conferences addresses the issue of “snarky tweets” during presentations. What should be the guidelines of what is acceptable and what is not? My own experience of tweeting during presentations at Presentation Camp LA highlighted for me the new challenges we face around Twitter etiquette at conferences. The research [...]

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Should you display the live twitter stream on a large screen?

May 20, 2009

Twitter is now a reality at many conferences. Now the question is: should you display a live twitter stream on a large screen so that everyone (not just the tweeters) in the audience can see it? Having twitter on a large screen can enrich the conference experience. Here’s a report from the Museums and the [...]

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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 [...]

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8 Presentation Tips for beating Audience Boredom

March 4, 2009

I asked you, my readers, to tell me about the challenges you have with presenting on “boring” topics. Ann Hemplemann wrote to me: Oh, Olivia, you are ringing my bell on this one! I’m an environmental engineer and educator, and my topics range from dull to confusing. I give presentations designed to help plant operations [...]

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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 I used two strategies that took into [...]

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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 [...]

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6 ways to engage your audience through the social channel

February 24, 2009

Just as we have a verbal channel for words and a visual channel for images, we have a social channel for non-verbal signals. That’s the big idea of Alex Pentland’s book “Honest Signals”. Alex Pentland is a professor at MIT Media Lab. He and his team have used a specially designed digital sensor called a [...]

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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 [...]