Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Wake up your audience

Sometimes Powerpoint presentations put the audience to sleep. If we are conference organizers or meeting designers, we may think that the way to avoid this is to urge presenters to be more fun and engaging. But it's hard to teach old dogs new tricks.

Instead, control what you can, and that is the context in which they speak. Make that a learning context. Merely ask the presenter to speak for a set length of time, preferably shorter than they are used to. Then use the time gained for learning processes that the meeting facilitator will introduce. Like these six things: