Daniel is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about presentations.
At some point in time, every individual is tortured with
having to create or be a part of a presentation. These presentations can range
from persuasion, building good will, or just general information.[1]
Whether or not a certain individual learns from a presentation doesn’t
necessarily depend on the structure, but the combined relation of the
participant and the structure of the presentation itself.
Usually
we determine a presentation to be informative if we were really engaged or if a
concept discussed, sparks a new interest. However, experience tells us that
outside sources also really influence our motivation to be a part of the
presentation. Haven’t you ever found
yourself starting to drift off during a presentation and suddenly you’re
completely lost? This is can be a result of a lack of sleep, hunger,
personality type, and even an unstructured presentation. Most
seminars/presentation creators don’t realize that creating the right setting is
actually pretty vital. Having the initial attention of the participant and
holding it is actually the greatest accomplishment of a presentation.
Obviously, people that register for a presentation usually don’t have this
problem but a greater number of presentations are more geared towards
requirements such as job opportunities, school activities, training exercises
etc. So when these types of participants are forced into a situation where a
presentation just has to happen they already go in with the wrong mindset. Some
would believe that they would learn more and of course others would see it as a
waste of time. Honestly, when done correctly every presentation can grab the
audience while actually getting them to learn something.
I like
to call this idea “grabbing the audience,” pretty similar to Billy Mays’ idea
but implemented in the presentation world. A good example would be defensive
driving. Nobody would ever do defensive driving if it took place in a classroom.
So usually they conduct it in a restaurant with a pretty informal setting. This
allows the participants to feel more comfortable and put aside those
distractions such as hunger and no focus. My interpretation would be pretty
similar but rely on different tactics. Calling out participants randomly, maybe
introducing a joke or two and altering your tone of voice. This would really
create uncertainties in the audience and would actually require everyone to
start paying attention because of fear of being called on or missing a good
joke.
At the
same time presenter qualifications are just as crucial. It is very easy to
dismiss a lecture if the person speaking doesn’t have the right credentials.
That’s why a thorough examination of speakers must be done prior to a serious
presentation. Certain traits such as charisma, physical appearance, and
publications are also just as crucial. Even certain situations would require
these characteristics to change. If your audience is very technical savvy, then
having the speaker introduce technical lingo would not be a bad idea because it
would be expected that the audience would have no problem understanding.
Once
presenter and audience attention have been attained the last and final piece is
to mesh your structured presentation. This part isn’t necessarily the most
important, as discussed, but here you can easily lose your audience if you
aren’t careful. Always maintaining audience attention is very difficult in this
new technology era. For instance, when browsing Google, how many times have you
honestly gone to the second search result page? Some people would say sometimes
and most people would say never. This is because we want information as fast as
possible, as accurate as possible, and when totally unrelated, we immediately
shut it out. So as a presenter your goal is even more difficult. As your
audience is digesting the projected information, it’s essential that you
maintain your focus and relate most of the lecture to the bigger picture.
As for the
presentation structure, the presenter must begin with introducing himself. This
brief interaction with the audience will give the presenter a personality
instead of just being the voice of the lecture. This can also be used as an
attention grabber because he can introduce some of his publications and why he
feels that he is worthy of giving a presentation on a specific topic. Once the
introduction is over, the proceeding of the presentation should be continuous
and not too robust around any particular area. All specific details must be
documented and cited according to educational and legitimate standards.
Real-World
Presentations take place throughout any professional’s career and whether or
not your audience learns from it is dependent on presentation quality, audience
engagement, and eliminating those humanistic distractions.
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