Presentation Zen [60]
If Your Idea is Worth Spreading…
I absolutely love TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). The annual TED conference brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are invited to give insanely great talks on stage in only 18 minutes. The time limitation usually results in presenters making very concise, tight, and focused talks. If you’re going to have ideas worth talking about then you’ve got to be able to stand, deliver, and make your case. As the presenters at TED demonstrate every year, presentation skill is critically important.
What’s great about TED is that they don’t keep their amazing presentations accessible to only an elite few. Instead, they “give it away” by uploading loads of their best presentations to the Web and make the videos available in many different formats for online viewing or download. (I watch many of the presentations on my iPod while commuting on the subway in the mornings.) Over 150 talks from the TED archive are now available, with more added each week. The production quality is excellent and so is the content. TED truly exemplifies the spirit of the conceptual age: share, give it away, make it easy, because the more people who know your idea, the more powerful it becomes. Because of the high-quality free videos, the reach and impact of TED has been huge. The TED Web site is a great resource. www.ted.com/talks
Stand, Deliver, Connect
Hans Rosling, a professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, is the Zen master of presenting statistics that have meaning and tell a story. Rosling co-developed the software behind his visualizations through his nonprofit Gapminder. Using UN statistics, Rosling shows that it is indeed a different world. You can see two presentations on the TED Web site that show Rosling’s talents. Conventional wisdom says never stand between the screen and the projector. Generally this is good advice. But as you can see from the photo here, Rosling at times defies conventional wisdom and gets involved with the data in an energetic way that engages his audience with the data and his story.
Keep the Lights On
It is a common reaction all over the world: Just as the presenter is ready to begin, someone shouts “could you get the lights, please!” And the room becomes shrouded in darkness, save for the light reflecting off the screen. The presenter? She must be there somewhere, I can hear her speaking (or is that the audience breathing?).
If you want your presentation to be more effective, then don’t touch that light switch. Even when you are using slides, the more lights you can keep on, the better off you will be. Remember, you’re trying to connect, to tell a story, to sell an idea to the board or other decision makers. It is very difficult to make a connection if the audience can’t see you. The audience is not there to witness the narration of slides; they are there to listen to you and become engaged with you and your topic. If the audience can’t see you, they will find it difficult to listen, and they are certainly more likely to tune you out.
The audience must experience both your “verbal speech” and your “visual speech.” A relatively small part of your message is actually verbal. The rest of your message is expressed visually and vocally. Influencing people verbally becomes far more difficult when they can’t see you.
Cliff Atkinson reminds us of the evidence that supports the claim that the more the audience can both see and hear you, the better. “It turns out that when you watch people speak, the visual cues help you to predict and understand the auditory cues that follow soon after. These visual cues are actually not limited to the lips, but include the entire human face,” says Atkinson. According to the authors of Why Business People Speak like Idiots (Free Press), “…human beings are hard-wired to draw much more meaning from people than they are from the information that people present.” True, but they’ve got to see you.
Ten years ago, projectors were not all that bright,