Who will be my audience?
Start preparing early! Make an effort to find out as much as you can about those who will attend.
It's not enough to know who is coming. You must also try to see your presentation from your audience's perspective and background; their previous knowledge, work experience, habits and customs, familiarity with the industry, etc. In some cases, age, sex and political persuasion are important. If your audience comes from different countries, add culture, religion, taboos etc. And remember attitudes, views, preconceptions and prejudices!As a check, ask yourself a number of questions:
- Why will these people be attending? How have they been notified/invited?
What have they been promised what are their expectations?
Are they coming on their own accord or have they been ordered to attend?
What do they know ahead of time? Who are the key people?
Who will introduce you?
What do I want from them?What are the major and minor goals? How much time do you have?
Have you really considered what's involved?
How do step 1 and step 2 add up? Can you reasonably achieve your goals with the target group in the allotted amount of time? And is it reasonable to believe that you can keep these people interested during that time?If it's reasonable to believe that you can keep these people interested during that time - go ahead!If not, you have to make a change somewhere. It's usually possible to make big changes – if you start early enough. Change the time, the target group – even the target group's frame of reference – possibly by sending them something to read in advance. If despite your best efforts to make changes you realize that things aren't going to work, you should cancel!
Try to avoid getting involved when the conditions are completely wrong. Otherwise you can hurt yourself, your company, organization or institution, or your proposal.
Lots of good ideas and perfect proposals have been delayed, blocked and even ruined because of poor presentations!
It's usually difficult to make a return visit if you've held a poor presentation, since the audience may already have made up their minds that you, your company or institution, or your proposal aren't very interesting.
What do I think they
want to know?
NOTE! Don't stop with writing down just the questions you think your listeners will ask,This appears simple enough. But do you notice the difference? We haven't started with you, your project or proposal or even what you planned to talk about – we started with the listener or reader!
but try to write down even the questions they would ask – if they could have imagined your
presentation, if they had considered the topic, if they dared to ask, if they had been there
and seen what you've seen, if they had seen your experiment, if they had read or heard
competing views, theories and solutions – in short...
... if they had understood what they should ask about!
Then rank the questions in order of your listener's or reader's interest,
and make sure to have the answers.
We did not follow the traditional advice about collecting all the facts, then writing down all the things we can think of and then removing them from our list as we include them in our presentation. This traditional advice does not consider the listener or reader.
But shouldn't I at least think about what I need to include and in what order to present it? you ask.
No, not really. If you do as I suggest above,
The content is the answers to the questions. And, the order of presentation is the one
your listeners or readers consider to be most interesting!
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What do I do if I have a mixed audience? If my target group consists of both specialists and amateurs.
How do I write questions?
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