Today’s audiences expect more from a speaker than the traditional lecture. They want to be inspired, motivated, entertained and learn relevant take aways that they can apply immediately. They are not satisfied with sitting passively listening to monologues and panel platitudes. They want to actively participate in an education session. The End Of A Speaker-Expert … [Read more…]
Conference audiences of days gone by were satisfied with the gathering of colleagues, a mediocre experience and a few useful tips. Today’s audiences are more demanding and sophisticated. They expect to learn practical and useful information that solves their individual problems. They expect speaker presentations that are compelling and memorable. And they expect to be … [Read more…]
Revised and updated from original post about presentations and images published on October 25, 2011. Presentations are the business currency of today. PowerPoint is often the legal tender of those presentations. We trade and share PowerPoint presentations like baseball cards, stamps and money. And SlideShare is the largest online community for sharing great presentations! When … [Read more…]
“Nobody can’t teach nobody nothing,” says O. P. Kolstoe, author of College Professoring. We need better presenters, as our conference attendees often suggest. Or we need better attendees as our speakers often state. I think Kolstoe hit the bull’s-eye. As a presenter, so also a learner–the conference attendee. (paraphrased Joseph Lowman, 1995). If there is … [Read more…]
I start the majority of my presentations by making an agreement with my audience. I call it my presenter-attendee agreement. Why use valuable presentation time for the presenter-attendee agreement? Most people come to conferences and presentations with an implied agreement that the presentation is about and for the speaker, not the audience. In reality, the … [Read more…]
I was extremely irritated. In less than twenty minutes I visited four different conference education sessions. Each of them was a waste of my time. Two sessions were about content that I already knew, even though their session descriptions said they were for advanced audiences. One session had two bumbling, rambling presenters speaking jargon and … [Read more…]
Is your conference content like an encyclopedia, a textbook or a report? Does your conference promote content-centric or learner-centric design? Unfortunately, most conferences default to content-centric design without even knowing it. SMEs Do It Difficultly If your conference prides itself on securing subject matter experts (SMEs) to present information, then consider the following. Your attempt … [Read more…]
Many years ago I taught school during the day and high school dropouts preparing for their GED exam at night. It was a grueling schedule. Yet, it was extremely rewarding. On The Road To GED Every evening, after a long day of teaching, I spent another five hours on my second job at Students For … [Read more…]
During my three years in high school, I diligently worked on our school yearbook. I even served as assistant editor and editor of our yearbook. I enjoyed the design process including creating each two-page spread layout. I also spent many hours making sure that as many of my peers were pictured in candid shots as … [Read more…]
Which would you rather attend: A ninety-minute speech or a ninety-minute movie? You’ve got to be kidding, right? The majority of us would rather go to a movie than a speech. Now, let’s put this into a conference context. Given a choice, would you rather go to a two-day film festival or a two-day conference? … [Read more…]
