Thou shalt not bore thine audience with irrelevant fluff - thou shalt concentrate on the real NEED TO KNOW data.
This commandment is easily demonstrated using an example - let's use Swine Flu as the topic of your presentation.
Think about what your audience really needs to know about this potential pandemic.
If your audience is the general public, then what they really NEED TO KNOW must be about the symptoms, treatment and what to do if you think you have it.
If that is the NEED TO KNOW information, how do the recent news reports stack up:
* Information on the genetic make-up of swine flu
* That swine flu is a variation of the H1N1 virus
* How the disease spread from pigs into the human population and why
* What the difference is between an epidemic and a pandemic
Lots of this is fluff. It's not offensive, but it's not NEED TO KNOW either.
It confuses the issue and overloads us with facts that are not going to save us.
For everything you are thinking of saying in a presentation put it through the NEED TO KNOW filter.
It doesn't matter how interesting the story is, or how funny your statistics are, or how much research it took some lab rat to discover the origins of the theory. If your audience, in this situation do not NEED TO KNOW, then leave it out. Please.
Showing posts with label need to know. Show all posts
Showing posts with label need to know. Show all posts
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Editing Your Content: the NEED to know basis
Last week I sat through a number of presentations at a networking event. The event was designed to help women grow their business and one of the topics was marketing.
The presenter had great charisma and personal style - she was passionate and enthuiastic about her topic, which she obviously knew a great deal about. She spoke without notes, which meant she could engage with us directly. She even made her talk interactive by asking questions of the audience to demonstrate how some of us had approached marketing for our own businesses.
But she talked about nearly every aspect of marketing known to man: from blogs, to social networking, local and national media, radio interviews, direct marketing and so on and so on. I knew we were in trouble when I saw her handouts - copies of her bullet point ridden slides (never a good sign).
I left in feeling totally overwhelmed - and I was not alone. Various people made comments about how they needed a break now to take it all in.
I was left with that feeling "I am sure I have learnt something, I am just not sure what".
She was suffering from an inability to focus and edit her ideas down into manageable chunks.
As a result her NEED TO KNOW ideas got lost amongst the rest of what she said.
Whatever the presentation or workshop you are designing, before you start cramming in every thing you have learnt in the last ten, twenty or thirty years, think about this...
What does your audience really NEED TO KNOW?
You might brainstorm lots of ideas, but it is vital that you pick out just one thing that you really feel is the most important thing for your audience to learn. You can add in a few more (depending on the time available), but do make sure that you know what thing or few things you really want your audience to leave with.
The presenter had great charisma and personal style - she was passionate and enthuiastic about her topic, which she obviously knew a great deal about. She spoke without notes, which meant she could engage with us directly. She even made her talk interactive by asking questions of the audience to demonstrate how some of us had approached marketing for our own businesses.
But she talked about nearly every aspect of marketing known to man: from blogs, to social networking, local and national media, radio interviews, direct marketing and so on and so on. I knew we were in trouble when I saw her handouts - copies of her bullet point ridden slides (never a good sign).
I left in feeling totally overwhelmed - and I was not alone. Various people made comments about how they needed a break now to take it all in.
I was left with that feeling "I am sure I have learnt something, I am just not sure what".
She was suffering from an inability to focus and edit her ideas down into manageable chunks.
As a result her NEED TO KNOW ideas got lost amongst the rest of what she said.
Whatever the presentation or workshop you are designing, before you start cramming in every thing you have learnt in the last ten, twenty or thirty years, think about this...
What does your audience really NEED TO KNOW?
You might brainstorm lots of ideas, but it is vital that you pick out just one thing that you really feel is the most important thing for your audience to learn. You can add in a few more (depending on the time available), but do make sure that you know what thing or few things you really want your audience to leave with.
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