May the almighty wrath of the audience consume your boring conference speech in fire
Gather, sisters and brothers of the flock, and hear me now! For I speak to you of a pestilence upon this land. A plague that sweeps conference keynotes, presentations and panels without mercy.
Innocents go willingly to these events, and yea, they pay vast registration fees — yet they are rewarded not with inspiration and insight, but with tedium! monotony! and I say unto you, underwhelming content!
And so I say unto you today, there are nine deadly sins of conference presentations. I speak not of delivery, for that is a whole other book of evils, but of content alone. These nine sins will visit pain and boredom unto your audience, and woe betide you if you are guilty of even one.
But friends, do not fear. There is a penance for each sin that will redeem you in the eyes — and ears — of your audience, if you but pay it before you reach the stage.
Sin #1: Your presentation should be a white paper.
Your vanity is fed by a dizzying array of facts and figures at your command. And though you have much insight, you have no narrative arc. And by the time you get to your fourth Excel table, your audience is checking their email… or the insides of their eyelids.
Your penance: Reframe your presentation around the story you want to tell. Choose a few crucial facts and figures to buttress your case, and leave the rest out. As for the previous version of your presentation, redeem it of its sins by making it into a literal white paper, and let your audience know where they can download it.
Sin #2: Your presentation is predictable.
Remember well the old Holiday Inn slogan, “No surprises.” Yet I ask you, friends: is not a Holiday Inn for sleeping? For that is what your audience will do if you offer no suprises — if you state the obvious, stick to safe terrain, use the same-ol’-same-ol’ case studies, and say nothing they could not have predicted from your bio and the session description. And yea, nothing will they gain, nor will their feedback forms be positive.
Your penance: Research new cases and examples, and look for them in surprising places, such as fields that might appear unrelated to yours. Take a hard look at your argument and the data behind it. What’s a new insight you can offer? What’s something you can say that your audience wouldn’t expect to hear from someone in your position, or representing your organization?
Sin #3: Your speech is mechanical.
Cursèd is the speaker whose speech intrudes on their speech. Redemption lies in the story you tell, not in referring to the mechanics underneath it. Phrases like “Moving to the next slide,” “My next point is,” or “Now let me hand the mic to Avery” make the audience do the labour of lurching from one part of your speech to the next.
Your penance: Reconnect to the narrative flow of your speech. Why are you moving to this next point? Because there’s a causal relationship — or because this implies that — or because that insight raises this question. Even something as handing off to another speaker is a chance to connect what you’ve just said to what they’re about to.
Sin #4: You’re pitching, not presenting.
Mark well: you will be cast out into the pit of speakers to whom no return invitation is issued if you sell from the stage. And be not deceived yourself by a thin veil of content: your audience knows when you’re selling your organization’s product or service. And if they’ve invested money and time to be here, they will be sore ticked with you. Even if you’re a conference sponsor. (You may fritter away whatever goodwill your sponsorship has earned you with one hamfisted pitch.)
Your penance: Throw out your presentation and start over. You need to tell a story and deliver something of intrinsic value to your audience. And the hero of that story isn’t you and your product; it’s the audience member (whether directly or because they’ll identify with the protagonist).
Sin #5: Your presentation has no drama.
Believe not the lie that “drama” means stark photos, high-contrast slides or cool lighting effects on stage. Drama means your story has conflict: inner conflict, conflict with others, a clash of ideas, a confrontation with a force of nature, a battle to achieve something against all odds, a struggle against forces of historical or societal proportions. Without it, you might as well be reading a software manual.
Your penance: At the very least, you’re going to need to channel your Id a little. What does your point of view clash with? Is it the status quo, a competing explanation, a different approach? What’s the competition for your audience’s hearts and minds, and why does it fall short? Now, drama-wise, that’s your bare minimum… but you need to go a little deeper to be fully on the side of the angels. Look at your presentation’s narrative from the audience’s point of view. What obstacles are they facing? Who or what stands between them and their goals? Explore that conflict, and show them how they can come out on top.
Sin #6: You’re aiming your presentation at the wrong audience.
Consider the parable of the foolish shepherd, who led the wrong flock to the barn and thereby consigned his village to destitution lasting two score years. This teaches us both that agrarian economies can be damn brutal, and that you must not deliver basic content to a ninja-level audience. Or advanced material to folks at the 101 level. Or use examples and illustrations that mean little or anything to your audience.
Your penance: Do some research. Talk to the conference organizers or past presenters. Check out the Twitter hashtags for last year’s conference and for this one. Get to know the people who are likely to come to your session, and tweak your content accordingly.
Sin #7: You’re pulling a bait-and-switch.
Observe the serpent whose skin shimmers with beauty, but whose bite delivers only death. It is akin to your presentation, whose session description promises one thing, but whose content delivers another. I say unto you, people are going to be peeved.
Your penance: This one’s pretty simple: deliver what you promised. Now, if you have a compelling reason not to — if the landscape has shifted because of some tectonic new development, for example — then talk to the event organizers, and flag up-front that your talk has changed (and why). And consider whether there might be some way you can still deliver a little on your original promise in your new presentation.
Sin #8: You’ve ignored all your storytelling tools.
Sistren and brethren, there is a reason novelists do not write “This happened, and then this other thing happened, and then this other thing happened.” Indeed, they engage a vast array of narrative techniques, and thus do they engage their audiences. You could follow in their blessed path — but apparently you have strayed.
Your penance: Read a little about storytelling, and borrow at least one literary technique to apply in your presentation. Here’s just one, a tool that both holds an audience’s attention and helps propel a narrative: suspense. Hold something back — something important to the audience. Take them on an investigation or an exploration that culminates in the discovery of a key insight.
Sin #9: You’re spending your speech on the astral plane (or in the muck).
Do not, my friends, mistake speaking from above the clouds with having the high ground — for your speech of high-minded abstraction will leave your audience unmoved. Neither should you mire yourself in the weeds, churning through obscure technical details and factual minutia without getting to a larger point. Instead, heed the words of Marie Della Mattia, my colleague from my days with The NOW Group, and “pitch your tent at the right emotional altitude.”
Your penance: Come down from your cloud (or up from your swamp) and strike a balance: enough specifics to make your topic real and concrete to your audience, with enough loft to make it inspirational — or at least to let them generalize to cover their own challenges and opportunities.
And now, good friends, with your penance paid and your souls restored, I bid you go forth and speak some more.
Photo by Flickr user amygwen. Used under a Creative Commons license.
