In his recent blog post, Podcast to Oblivion, Iconfactory co-founder Gedeon Maheux writes about podcasters risking losing their audiences due to the increasing lengths of their productions. It's a good read, especially if you listen to podcasts or create podcasts yourself, but the issue he raises is also relevant to presenters.

Toward the end if his article, Mr. Maheux writes:

So how long should your average audio podcast be? Not surprisingly if you ask a podcast producer they’ll probably tell you “As long as it needs to be.” Unfortunately this attitude often reflects the desires of the creator and not those of the audience.

This seems to be the attitude of many presenters I've seen – I do not except myself from this criticism. We have a topic to talk about, and we will cram as much information about that topic into our presentation as we can. We may have a 45-minute time slot in which to present, but we've prepared two hours worth of material. On the other hand, I've sat through two hour presentations that could easily have been delivered in 45-minutes.

I've posted images of this slide deck before, and here it is again. This was my first attempt at creating a presentation about reactive attachment disorder (RAD).



This was 118 (give or take) bullet points over thirty-two slides. This presentation was not about what my audience really needed to know about RAD – it was about looking at all the stuff I learned! DId I mention that I had thirty minutes in which to deliver all of this material?

When we are planning a presentation, we should be thinking about length from the beginning. We should be remembering that our presentation is for the benefit of our audience members – not for our own benefit. Part of benefitting our audience is presenting the content in a way that is easy to digest (as possible) and that respects their time and attention spans.

Regarding podcasts, Gedeon Maheux writes:

When podcasts approach the length of feature films, people start to lose interest.

The same can be said about presentations. Keep the information manageable by focusing in on what is most important. What do you want your audience to walk away remembering? Focus on that. The rest is details.

Tags: time use

I saw a speaker today who was clearly having problems with the technology involved in his presentation. The technology was nonessential, but he still kept stopping every few words to fiddle with the projector and its settings, trying to get things focused, trying to account for some other visual anomalies. This went on for at least thirty minutes, and, each time he stopped, he had a harder time regaining his audience's attention. In fact, he had entirely lost a small chunk of his audience before the issues were resolved (but that may have been for other reasons).

If your technology is giving you problems, and it's time for you to start talking, go ahead without it. If there is something you feel is absolutely essential to your talk that is tied to the tech, get someone who works at the facility you are presenting in to work on it while you begin delivery. Technology is meant to enhance presentations, but, if we give it more attention than we give our audience, it has become a diminishing factor to the message you are delivering.

Tags: prep, atmosphere, time use

We've discussed the length of our presentations in a couple of different posts now, but watching Stan Sigman deliver his talk during the Macworld keynote got me thinking again about length and audience attention span.


Every sentence read adds an hour to each minute...

The saying goes that time is relative. We save time, waste time, borrow time, and spend time. The minutes spent waiting in a doctor's office can seem much longer than the minutes spent playing video games at home. Mr. Sigman was on stage for all of seven minutes – seven very long minutes. When I checked the time in the podcast, I was surprised. I had expected to see him onstage for fifteen or twenty minutes. His talk really did seem that long.

Contrast this to Steve Jobs' portion of the presentation. The entire keynote was 1:45 long, and Mr. Jobs was speaking for all but about twenty minutes of that. Yet his portion did not feel as drawn out as Mr. Sigman's.


"I could talk for days, and you'd hardly notice."

What's the difference? I think a lot of it comes from my previous post. Mr. Sigman's talk was stiff and formal. It was basically read right off his cards, and it was full of corporate jargon and buzzwords. Mr. Jobs, in contrast, spoke passionately about his company's products. Any notes he might have had were fairly transparent, and he spoke in clear, easily understood language. Also, Steve Jobs kept things moving and kept the audience anticipating the next revelation about these products.

Timing is a very important part of your presentation. Sometimes shorter is better, but other times you may have to spend some serious time giving your talk. In either scenario, don't just be aware of the literal time, but ask yourself how long your presentation feels to your audience. Do you look and sound like you actually care about your topic? Are you keeping the flow moving? Is the audience anticipating your next points? If you can positively answer these questions, then relative time will work in your favor.

Tags: examples, time use, atmosphere, impression, connections

In my very first post on this blog, I emphasized the importance of trying to be concise with one's material. There are many examples of long, very engaging presentations, but, for the most part, you don't want to make a habit out of speaking for long stretches of time.



No matter your intentions, though, avoid beginning your presentation with something like this: "I'm only going to keep you for a little while;" "I'm planning on keeping this short;" or "This won't take long." Think back about talks you've heard starting with similar phrases. What's the common theme? Chances are most to all of them did take a long time.

I think we try to talk ourselves into believing our presentation is not as long as it really is. With good intentions, we try to fool ourselves and the audience about the time we are going to spend, but telling an audience that your talk is going to be short does not make the talk feel shorter. In fact, the opposite is true. The time you take to deliver your material will seem even more prolonged due to the expectation you planted in the minds of your audience.

Long or short, if your talk is engaging, length is relative. Don't sabotage yourself by planting a false expectation before you begin.

Tags: time use, speaking

You just finished your presentation. you gave your summation, and now you launch into the question-and-answer section. Ten to fifteen minutes later, the questions fizzle out, and the crowd trickles away. Is this really how you want to conclude your talk?

In my last post (about summations), I stated that your summation is important because it leaves a final impression on your audience. This is only true, though, if the summation is the last thing that happens. If you save the Q&A for the conclusion, that will leave the final impression. Unfortunately, presentations that end with Q&A sessions often end on an uncertain note because there is little sense of closure. No matter how strong the overall session, a concluding Q&A can weaken the overall experience.

The solution? Conduct the Q&A before the summation. I've gotten into the habit of wrapping up my final point, launching into a timed question/answer session, then delivering my summation. Make sure you have contact information on your handout because you will likely not get to everyone's questions, but this allows the conversational portion of the presentation to take place under controlled settings. (Timing the Q&A also helps with schedule management.)

Once you conclude the Q&A, you can launch into the summation and wrap up your presentation with a definitive conclusion. As a result, you and your audience will walk away feeling better about your presentation.

Tags: time use, atmosphere, speaking

Is it me, or do we see agenda slides just about everywhere? We presenters can't seem to help ourselves, and, before any meeting or presentation, a slide like this will be staring everyone in the face. Now don't get me wrong. It's appropriate to pass out agendas from time to time. Just because I can't think of an example doesn't mean they don't exist. However, the agenda has no real reason to be incorporated into your slides.



Your audience can handle solid food. An agenda slide is a form of spoon-feeding – plain and simple. In most settings, your audience is intelligent enough to follow what's going on without point-by-point preparation. Chances are good you are working with professionals who are quick and flexible in their thinking. An agenda slide kind of insults that intelligence.

Who's going to remember anyway? Honestly, five minutes into the talk or meeting, no one is going to remember all of the agenda points. If you handed out an agenda, why did you stick it on a slide? That's just redundant.

Only three more items, and we're outta here! Face it – you just gave the meeting participants a checklist. They will continually refer back to your agenda to see how close you are to finishing. It becomes more of a distraction than a facilitator to anything.

I know I'm going to get some flack from colleagues regarding this post. Agenda slides are old hat. We're used to them, so why bother eliminating them? Quite simply, it comes down to the small touches. If you want your presentation to stand out as unique and individual, sidestep cliché and the mundane whenever you can. An audience won't be distracted by the absence of an agenda – and that is exactly what you want.

Tags: conventions, time use, avoid

I've seen way too many keynotes, seminars, and presentations now, and I've seen a ton of introductions. If you are at a keynote of some kind, the keynote speaker is usually somehow formally introduced. ("Our speaker today is known for..." or "Ladies and gentlemen, Insert Name!") If it is something smaller scale, you may get a one-sheet introducing your speaker, or you may have the speaker introducing him- or herself. ("...I want to wish you the best of mornings and tell you how truly fortunate I feel...") Once in a while, you get a presenter who wants to play some kind of get-to-know you game, but those shall not be spoken of here.

The video mentioned in my prior post has Steve Jobs being introduced by another speaker, and it distracted me because this is so unusual for Mr. Jobs. The usual Steve Jobs intro goes something like this: Lights dim; Steve Jobs walks out, says, "Good morning. Thanks for coming. We have a lot of great announcements today, so let's get started," and the presentation begins. That's it.

Your introduction will make an early impression on your audience. In my experience, respectful but concise is a good idea. You've acknowledged your audience and have expressed appreciation for their presence, but you're not going to waste their time either. There's not much more an audience appreciates than a presenter who avoids wasting time.

Tags: steve jobs, examples, conventions, time use, impression, connections

Sometimes, you just can't avoid a long sermon. Many of my cousins are gospel preachers – very good preachers – and one of them just made a short blog post about a very long sermon he recently did that covered recent interest in the DaVinci Code. The sermon lasted 62 minutes.

In my first post about Breaking Rules, I noted that Vincent van Gogh is not considered a great artist because of his strict adherence to all the rules. In fact, the case is quite the opposite, and I would surmise that many members of the congregation my cousin preached at hardly felt the extended time period despite the 10-20-30 rule.

So how do you present 62 minutes of material and keep it engaging?

Stay Focused: The length should come from a wealth of material – not because you are busy chasing rabbits.

Stay Energetic: If you appear bored or fatigued with yourself, you are doomed. (I'm having a terrible flashback to a certain lesson about Genesis 1+2 back at TP, for those of you who know of what I speak.)

Keep It Moving: Avoid spending 45 of the 60+ minutes on one point. (Whoa, same flashback...)

Keep It Real: Use material that is current and relevant. The topic of my cousin's sermon is a great example. Make sure the material has a hook that will maintain engagement.

Don't Mention It: Avoid warning your listeners. "Today's lesson is probably going to be 12 hours long." No. You know you accomplished your task if few are aware of the elongated time period.

Don't Make It a Habit: You can only get away with this so many times.

Remember, human attention dwindles quickly, and you, as a speaker, need to put extra effort into maintaining that attention if you know you will be speaking for a long time. As for your slides, the guidelines don't change – you will just end up with more than 10. With the right material and the proper planning, long sermons can be effective.

Tags: sermons, time use, 10-20-30

One of the most common slides we see in presentations is the dreaded "About Me" slide (or some variation thereof). It's the part of the presentation where the audience effectively shuts their brains off and waits for the presenter to get to his or her point. If the presenter is lucky, perhaps half of his or her audience will re-engage once the "About Me" section is complete.

At ICE, we presenters had a 45-minute budget to work with. Every presentation I watched had at least one slide devoted to "About Me." Now, in this setting, it is nice to know a little bit about who you are and where you are coming from, but one team spent 15 minutes on who they were! They spent 1/3 of their time budget off topic, and, quite predictably, by the end of their session, the team was rushing to get through the prepared material.

Why do we add "About Me" slides? Is it ego? I don't think so. I think we feel the need to talk about ourselves so our audience understands why we are qualified to talk about our given topic. We want our audience to have confidence in us as presenters. Unfortunately, the "About Me" slide is still adds nothing to your presentation and may serve as a detraction to the product as a whole.

• Qualifications do not make for a good presentation. Remember the people with 15 minutes of background and qualifications? Their material was blah. It had only marginal practical value (at least in the way they presented it), and they offered little other teachers could build on. Who you are matters nothing if you message is broken.
  
  
• Your audience doesn't care. Your audience is there because they want to hear what you have to say about your topic – not about yourself. If you speak well enough, and your audience connects with your message, then they will connect with you. As a result, you may find some people who want to get to know more about you after your presentation is completed.
  
  
• Your audience may already know. This is the opposite of #2. How ridiculous would it look for Steve Jobs or Al Gore to begin a presentation with a serious, in-depth "About Me" section. The fact is, if you have a reputation in your field, people WILL come because of who you are. If that is the case, why bore them with stuff they already know?
  
  
• It detracts from the whole. Again, you want your audience to be captivated by your message. You want them to be enchanted. Every minute you spend off-topic or on mundane details is a minute that your audience is losing its collective interest. In addition, every minute you spend off-topic is a minute less you have to spend on your topic.

I know that the "About Me" slide is almost a standard in presentations, but resist the pressure. Don't do it. Leave the "About Me" for your website (and make sure your URL is on the handout your guests receive). Make your presentation about your topic and nothing else.

Tags: avoid, time use, conventions

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

• Blaise Pascal

Brevity is not an effortless achievement. Anyone can stand in front of an audience and ramble for thirty minutes. However, challenge him or her to make a meaningful presentation or speech in ten minutes or less, and your results may vary. Being concise and to-the-point will not result from minimal preparation. Rather, it stems from greater planning and practice.

In any public speaking situation, the challenge is to avoid padding your material with redundant or meaningless fluff. Sometimes this materializes as that one personal story too many, or it may be in the seventh slide of bar graphs. Perhaps it is found in the fifth slide of bullet points that basically retreads the same ground as the last four slides. In any event, engagement and interest has been lost, and the the audience is slowly glazing over.

How do we avoid meaningless filler? Simply put:

• Practice your presentation multiple times before you have to give it. Are there any sections that bore you as the presenter? Do you feel tedious at any times? If you are having these feelings, imagine how your audience must feel. Go back and rework areas of your talk that you feel are drawn out.
  
  
• Seek the advice of others. Before taking your presentation to your audience, share it with some trusted friends or colleagues. Ask them to help you find areas that might encourage your audience to disengage. Welcome their critiques. Not all advice may be useful, but outside perspectives will help you expose those trouble areas.

Don't assume that tedium is a necessary evil. Neither should you assume every detail is interesting to your audience. Voltaire is quoted as saying, "The secret of being a bore is to tell everything." Better that your material be fifteen minutes long while inspiring and engaging your listeners than thirty minutes long with a disengaged audience. Preparation and practice is essential for presenting in a meaningful yet concise manner.

"Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon."

• Mark Twain

Tags: prep, time use, atmosphere