Lesson 3: HAVE YOU LOOKED FOR THE MOST-INTERESTING WAY TO GET YOUR INFORMATION ACROSS?

Anybody can MAKE a point. But I believe your job as a speaker at an event is to work out how to make your point as interestingly and engagingly as possible.

And, if you're wondering why should you care about being interesting and engaging ... that surely growns up will learn even if a presenter is boring and dry ... I say this:

TECHNICALLY, if course ... we ALL learn from even the most boring presentation (at the very least, we learn never to invite THAT person to speak again!).

But what should be MORE IMPORTANT to you than whether your audience learns or not are these four factors:

1. How MUCH they learned,

2. How FAST they learned

3. How LONG what they just learned will stay with them, and

4. Whether what they learned CHANGED THEIR BEHAVIOUR

And keeping your audience interested and engaged goes a long way to affecting how well your presentation influences those four factors .

So ... write your script as you would normally do ... but THEN, then go over your key points and think about these things for each:

- Can I use more interesting language ... or a language device (like alliteration, a metaphor etc)?

- Is there a picture I can use that enhances my point (in the way the GIF above enhances the point of "How Doing Things Differently")

- Can I use humour at this point, to help make it more memorable

- Is there something I can DO or SHOW my audience that means they don't have to ONLY listen to my explanation?

- Can I add in an activity for the audience to better illustrate the point?

- Is there a short story I could tell that makes my point more real?

Even if you go through the above process for only a small percentage of your content ... and you end up making only one or two improvements to your presentation ... the exercise is very worthwhile.

Have fun presenting!