I was at a tech conference yesterday that had its presenters up on a stage with the screen for presentations directly behind them. Big problem? The seated presenters heads were obscuring the view of the bottom 25% of the screen. If you are a conference organizer, you should look at a room as it will actually be used. This means you should sit in the audience and have someone sit in the cahir where the panelist is and see if anythign is obscured. This will solve the problem.

I attended a Web 2.o Conference here in New York sponsored by iBreakfast today. Lots of good speakers, but one big problem: video in presentations. The conference was on advertising and monetizing web content, so it made a lot of sense for marketers and advertisers speaking to show video in their presentation. But speaker after speaker got up, tried to play their video, and then apologized for it not working. The system wasn’t set up properly and there was no audio feed. By my rough estimate, half of the speakers used video and all of them had the same problem.

When you think about it, this really is silly. No one did any of the following:

1. Showed up early to do a rehearsal to see if things worked properly.

2. Tested during a break between speakers to see if their system worked.

3. Paid attention to the fact that the speaker who spoke 2 minutes before they did couldn’t make the system work, so chances are they would be able to either.

Speakers must realize that if you are going to use video in a presentation, you can’t just waltz up to the platform with your flash drive and plug in 2 minutes before speech time. You need to prepare, and rehearse on the actual equipment you will be using; otherwise, don’t bother using video.

Here is an excellent tutorial on how to place YouTube video into your PowerPoint Presentations. Personally, I use a lot of video in my presentations. However, I caution most people against this–There are numerous technical problems associated with video, even after you have figured out how to get it into your presentation.  Also, make sure you don’t use copyrighted material from YouTube in your presentation. YouTube has the billion dollar resources of the Google legal department to defend it; chances are that you don’t.

Governor Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kansas) made the Democratic response to George Bush’s State of the Union Address last night. Sebelius looked professional, smooth, competent, and knowledgeable.

But…

She read from a Teleprompter, and the truth is, it’s darned hard to read form a Teleprompter without putting people to sleep. Why? Because when non=professionals read form a Teleprompter, they tend to speak at the same speed, the same tone, the same volume throughout. The result? Sameness, which means boredom.

I happened to be watching Sebuelius’ speech with people who supported her politics and agenda. But after five minutes, everyone in the room was complaining about how boring and how long the speech was.

If you are going to use a Teleprompter, just realize that it is harder to do than working from notes. It is crucial that you get comfortable not only with the words, but with where you will change your speed, volume, tempo and where you will insert pauses. If you don’t prepare and rehearse these, you will bore your audience to death.

Much has been written about the excellent James Surowiecki book Wisdom of the Crowds, a look at how markets, in various forms, are routinely better than experts. Zagat has built a whole publishing empire based on this single principle. Index funds routinely beat most mutual funds on Wall Street. And yet, very few people think to apply this principle when it comes to public speaking.

I contend that nearly every aspect of a presentation can and should be subjected to the wisdom of the audience—specifically the speaking audience. But how, as a practical matter, would this be done?

Let’s say you have to give a new sales presentation to 100 prospects on Thursday. Well, on Tuesday, round up five colleagues in your office and give them your presentation. By “give them” I mean stand up and deliver them; don’t give them the text. Afterward, ask questions.

1. What slides does your audience remember? Any slide your audience doesn’t remember, then listen to their wisdom. Your slide is worthless—throw it away.
2. What messages does your audience remember? These messages work, so move them up and expand them in your speech.
3. Did you audience enjoy and remember your introduction where you talked about how happy you were to be there and about the boring history of your company? If not, then get rid of it—the wisdom of the audience has spoken.
4. What details and factoids does the audience remember? Any details or factoids that were in your speech but not remembered need to be either presented in a new and better way, or they should be eliminated from the presentation.
5. Where did you bore your audience? Get rid of it.
6. Where did you confuse your audience? Go into more detail here.
7. What does your audience want more of? Add this.
8. What does your audience feel compelled to do after hearing your speech? If it’s not what you wanted them to do, then you have big trouble.
9. What information would they have needed to hear from you in order to make them take the actions you wanted them to take after hearing your speech? Then add this to the speech.
10. How can any aspect of this presentation be improved? Add accordingly.

In addition to having a small group of colleagues give you feedback on your presentation before you give your actual speech; there is nothing wrong with asking a select number of audience members from your actual speech to give you feedback on these questions too. That way, you can refine your speech to make it better and better, the more often you have to give it to different groups.

It constantly amazes me that large multi-national corporations will spend billions of dollars on marketing research based on questions asked of housewives in malls and unemployed people with nothing better to do than answer a telephone survey. And yet the most valuable form of marketing research is often right in front of an executive and is ready to present itself for free, just for the asking. Isn’t it time you tapped into the wisdom of your audience?

An interesting take on the use of 3-d over at PowerPoint without Bullet Points blog today.

3-d is definitely over-rated when it comes to presentations. Most presenters woudl be better off showing the relationship between just 2 variables in any one slide; hence no need for 3-d. Check out the full article.

RSS, Podcasts, PowerPoint as a CD, slideshows, MP3…the list of high technology solutions for communicating seemingly grows every day. But none of these has replaced the impact of a big speech. All of these high tech solutions serve as ways to amplify the big speech. If you doubt me, just try going to Google news and type in “Bill Gates” + keynote or “Steve Jobs” + keynote. Thousands of web pages pop up, all within the last few days.

The more high tech the world become, the more people want to see newsmakers in the flesh. Bill Gates’ speech is often the highlight of the Consumer Electronics Show. Steve Jobs keynote is the highlight of MacWorld. The keynote speech at the national political conventions plus the acceptance speeches of the nominees get the lion’s share of media attention.

My point? Sure you must continue to learn new technologies, but for every hour you spend learning or using a new technology, you should spend just as much time (if not more) learning how to give a great speech.

Doug Simon does a great job of posting regular video stating his views on everything from how the writers’ strike will be resolved to who will be the next President. Simon has long been a leader in the video communications arena—his company DS Simon has been a leader in video news releases since forever. Yes, Simon has text on his blog, but video is his default medium—something I predict we will see more and more of as people get used to creating and appearing on video.

I’ve just gone through a list of 70 of the top public speaking blogs. I was struck by how few actually had experts speaking about speaking in a video or audio format.

As much as youtube and internet video get attention these days, text is still the default medium for people who wish to communicate ideas on the web. How much longer will this be the case? I started doing an Internet radio talk show in 1998—nobody listened. In 2000 I started a daily video and audio political blog—no one watched. Three years ago, I started doing daily speaking video segments on The Speaking Channel. The audience has been, shall we charitably say, less than Superbowl sized.

I continue to do daily videos at the Speaking Channel, but now I am about to start new regular video and audio segments here at TJWalker.com. Even though it is easier to simply type, I find that speaking is always going to be the best medium for talking about speaking. Please let me know what video segments you would find most helpful in a blog about public speaking. Either post a comment below or send me an email directly to tj@tjwalker.com.