Everyone has an aisle seat

Virtual presentations need to be short and engaging

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is about how to give better virtual presentations.
The most important thing to remember is that when you

(00:23):
are presenting virtually, everyone has the equivalent of an aisle seat.
You have to work a little bit harder to keep
them sitting there. When the pandemic swept through the world
last year, almost all in person conferences, workshops and classes
were canceled. A year later, these are slowly resuming, but

(00:45):
many people are still delivering a lot of their content virtually,
and you know what, that is not a bad thing.
There are some real upsides to not trying to convene
many people in one place. You save money on travel,
you don't pump so much carbon into the atmosphere, people

(01:06):
don't have to work out complicated childcare logistics, and people
who might not have been able to attend because of
family or health issues can participate as easily as the unencumbered.
For all these reasons, I suspect many conferences will continue
to have virtual components, and some conferences that began over

(01:27):
the past year will always be virtual. However, as many
teachers have found over the last year keeping people engaged
through virtual presentations is just harder when you are all
sitting in an auditorium together. It's not that easy to
stand up from an interior seat, cross over all of

(01:49):
your fellow attendees, and walk down the aisle to the
door while someone is presenting. You're probably also not going
to multitask by taking a phone caller a thing like that.
From an auditorium, you aren't staring at a pile of
laundry that needs to be put away. But in a
virtual context, it is easy to turn your camera off

(02:11):
and do something else. If you aren't engaged, you can
exit without anyone really noticing. The result is that with
virtual presentations, everyone has the equivalent of an aisle seat
in the back. It is very easy to slip out,
So if you are presenting, you need to realize this,

(02:33):
and you need to build your presentation with this in mind.
One of the best options is to be shorter. My
standard speech format used to be giving forty to fifty
minute keynotes for in person events. Now almost all my
virtual speeches are thirty minutes or less. When people only

(02:54):
have to sit through a shorter quantity of time, they
are less likely to check out. It also help to
be more interactive. For my talks, we usually fill the
balance of the time with a structured fireside chat. The
organizer has some questions queued up ahead of time, and
we discuss these topics to gather. Turns out people like

(03:14):
to hear other voices, not just one voice talking for
a full hour. You can do polls or ask people
to answer questions, and having people do exercises or write
specific things down can redirect someone who is about to
wander off to clean out the fridge without putting anyone
on the spot. And of course it helps to be

(03:36):
animated and to make sure your material is compelling. In general,
for speakers that means humor, or it means really good
dramatic storytelling. I've seen both work well, so just figure
out which best compliments your material. If you are presenting,
it helps to be able to see at least one

(03:57):
person on your screen who is listening to you, so
I usually ask to have an organizer or someone else
keep their camera on for me. If you can see
that person nodding, this can help you emphasize the right things,
and if they seem distracted, well may be best to
move on to the next topic. They were probably not

(04:17):
the only one. When everyone's got an aisle seat, you
need to plan things more carefully. Of course, a lot
of in person conferences would have benefited from better planning too,
but since people couldn't leave as easily, some of that
has been more of an afterthought. The shift to virtual

(04:37):
learning is forcing us all to rethink many things, but
I generally think that that is a positive. We all
need to improve that our skills and remembering that everyone
has an aisle seat can raise the caliber of any presentation.
In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and

(05:00):
here's to making the most of our time. Hey everybody,
I'd love to hear from you. You can send me
your tips, your questions, or anything else. Just connect with
me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Before Breakfast pod

(05:21):
that's b E the number four then Breakfast p o D.
You can also shoot me an email at Before Breakfast
podcast at i heeart media dot com That Before Breakfast
is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much,
I look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is

(05:43):
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.