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Monday, August 16, 2010

Pointers for Presenters

Having retired from the world of education I now have some time to devote to my hobby/passion for family history. Over the last eighteen months I have  attended a number of seminars and talks on genealogy and related subjects. Some presenters have been excellent and some have been downright woeful. Some of the genealogy presenters I have seen could do well to watch and learn from the presentations I have seen given by Australian students in our schools.

Having knowledge of a subject does not qualify one as a competent and engaging presenter.

Prompted by Thomas MacEntee's announcement that he has published a book " Approaching the Lectern: How to Become a Genealogy Speaker"  I have decided to make a few suggestions for Australian speakers. Each of these points could have helped one or some of the speakers I have heard recently.
  
Before

  • Update your knowledge of the topic
  • Get prior information on your audience 
  • Be prepared, have backups of your presentation
  • Prepare a handout or disk for distribution to participants or provide links to the presentation on the internet
  • Practice your talk in front of a trusted and honest friend or colleague and use their feedback to polish your work
  • Maintain regular contact with the hosting organisation
  • Dress appropriately for the situation 
  • Arrive early and check setup

During
  • Set the scene by giving some background information on yourself
  • State the rules of the game - Are you happy to be interrupted or do you want people to keep questions to the end?
  • Start with an overview of the presentation's content - Outline your goals for the gig
  • Display enthusiasm or passion for your subject
  • State your relationship to products being demonstrated - Some talks are thinly veiled marketing exercises/infomercials - Be honest and upfront about your connections to vendors/products
  • Speak clearly, coherently and with animation - Engage your audience through good communciation
  • Avoid Death by Powerpoint - You are the presenter
  • Sprinkle your talk with anecdotes and analogies - but don't overdo it
  • Use visual aids and artefacts to embellish your talk - Cater for individual learning styles of participants
  • Involve your audience - Ask them questions, get them to comment on a photo or artefact
  • When showing internet sites connect to the site - avoid screenshots - use them as backups for times of technology failure 
  • When talking about software - Accompany with a live demonstration
  • Be honest - If you don't know the answer to a question say so  
  • There may be experts in your audience who can add value to the event - Accept their comments graciously


Afterwards
  • Invite feedback via a printed or online feedback form - Offer a prze draw for completed forms
  • Set aside some time to talk to audience members individually after talk
  • Provide contact details for audinece followup 
  • Use audience feedback to amend and polish your presentation 

9 comments:

  1. I agree with each and every point - very well done! Isn't it funny that as genealogy speakers, when we attend sessions given by others, we are always keeping a keen eye on their performance.

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  2. Excellent list Jill. I tried to measure myself against these points as I read them, and I think I usually manage most of them. Some of them are impossible given the time constraints. For example, if I am giving an overview of an internet-based topic, as I often am, it is impossible to break out of powerpoint and go to a live demonstration for every site, so I select a few and try to do those, usually at the end. That way if there is a problem, and there are many possible problems, at least they've seen something of the site, and they have the address to try it out for themselves at home.

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  3. Thanks Jill. Great points. I actaully did a presentation today and the PPT version I had saved did not work on the provided laptop. Luckliy we were able to download a viewer and were only a few minutes late in starting - in which time I spruiked coming library events and speakers of interest to my family history researching audience off the cuff - - knowing your stuff helps and having a passion feeds into the audience I think too.

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  4. Thanks for the comments.

    The intention was to provide a checklist for presenters not a collection of items that must be incorporated into all presentations. As Carole says some would be impossible to do in some situations.

    I see a few uses for this list (that is not exhaustive)
    1. As a tool for personal evaluation
    2. As a pretalk aide-memoire
    3. As the basis of an audience feedback form.

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  5. Thanks for your very helpful comments. Would you be able to elaborate, please, on your suggestion 'Get prior information on your audience'?

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  6. Thanks, Judy
    I will try to write a short blog post on 'Get prior information on your audience' tomorrow.

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  7. Judy, I have penned a few words at http://geniaus.blogspot.com/2010/09/get-prior-information-on-your-audience.html

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  8. I liked your advice so much that your blog is my selection for Follow Friday this week.

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