The sole purpose of the presentation of P is to educate A about T, so after the presentation, what P wanted to explain to A about T is then also known by A.
Because make no mistake: if A wants to learn about T, it’s A’s job to learn about T, not P’s job. P already knows the stuff about T. If A needs to be ENTERTAINED to get off their lazy lardy asses to learn about T, I’d say: Darwin. If A doesn’t want to learn about T without entertaining stuff, so be it, it’s their loss, not P’s.
This inadvertently proves the point about entertainment being paramount. Rehash the story with proper names in there, tell it as a story, and it doesn’t become a huge list of variables!
Eschew bullet points - they are there to prompt the speaker
Use diagrams and pictures - people think in pictures
Give handouts - That’s where screeds of text belongs
I read a paper that says one of the shuttle disasters was indirectly caused by powerpoint bullet points. A key engineering point about checking for damage was hidden in a 6 point font on a slide about 15 slides in. The engineering company was ruled by salesmen and the only way they could communicate was using it. Instead of producing a proper technical report that everyone could read and discuss at a proper meeting NASA were handed a BS powerpoint full of tiny fonts and missed this - it cost a lot of lives and money. I hate bullet points.
Also, the font size should be half the age of your target audience - another reason to use pictures.
The next step past entertaining is actually finding that source of conflict that really engages the audience. Patrick Lencioni’s concepts of leveraging conflict and tension to engage meeting participants can be applied to listeners of a presentation. From his book Death by Meeting: “(movie makers) figured out that it is during the first ten minutes that they must use drama to hook their viewers, so that they are willing to stay engaged for another two hours.”
I agree with what Sean says. Entertainment is not something every person in the audience may be looking at, perhaps some of them might even be put off by it.
It was memorable enough for Sean to take the time to leave a comment, so I’d say it’s a success!
Hmm… if Sean likes this blog post, this shows it’s a success; if Sean doesn’t like it, this also shows it’s a success? That’s some great double-edged “logic”, I say…
Am I the only one who wants to know: What is THE longest running children’s show in the world?
It’s Blue Peter, a British kids TV show. Strange thing is I always found it dull as ditch water when I was younger so I guess that goes against the entertainment principle!
Hey Now Jeff,
Elmo is going to sing the Coding Horror Song today: Coding Horror, Coding Horror Cod-ing Hor-ror Coding, Coding, Coding, Coding, Coding HORROR. Say goodbye Dorothy.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto
I completely agree with you. The best presentations I’ve seen interested me, entertained me and showed me something new.
I agree with youssef that the same applies to blogs and I think to books, too. I like your and Raganwald’s blogs because I learn something while having fun reading it. I love the “Head First” books and the PragProg book, because they are fun to read. I also agree with David Dawkins about not reading the presentation. I can see what’s there.
I am a little shocked to see some of the reactions
I agree. I don’t know to how to entertain my audience, so I’am afraid of being a speaker. I think something is easy to say, but diffcult to do. “Entertaining my audience” is what I want.
There is a series of presentations from Larry Wall, developer of the Perl language that fit this model. His “State of the Onion” speeches were both entertaining and educational. If you haven’t read them, you can find the first 3 along with other presentations of his on his site
After sitting through hundreds of presentations with some being great and others being mediocre I have to agree that when an audience member feels engaged in the presentation they will remember the material longer. Not every presenter is going to get in front of an audience and “educate” them but if the presenter can find a method to get the viewer more engaged they will succeed. Getting the audience to remember the material and therefore possibly make them think about that presentation the next time that new knowledge is needed should be the goal in presenting new information.
Your blog is not entertaining at all. But it is absolutely engaging. There is a clear difference. Entertainment is fine, but up to a point it can serve as a massive distraction to the main point of the presentation as it becomes a highlight of its own.