After weeks of reading and writing about all things presentation, it was a real treat for your faithful correspondent to see the real thing in action. TEDxNashville was held last Saturday at TPAC’s Polk Theater in downtown Nashville. There was quite a gathering at the event, some of us more blurry-eyed than others, aided immensely by Crema’s gratis espresso and coffee. Caffeine in hand, we filed into the theater excitedly, ready to be enlightened and inspired by our speakers.
The energy was palpable in the theater, and the event’s emcee Ross Scott did his best to generate more and more enthusiasm. When he announced Meredith Perry, a 22-year-old Founder and CEO of a new tech company, as the next speaker our reaction was, wait, how old? Indeed, Perry is 22, and in addition to being named one of Forbes’ “30 under 30 future leaders,” she is a great presenter. Her talk was down to earth and funny, full of engaging stories and humorous anecdotes. She pointed out that in some cases, experts are trained to think inside the box and therefore can’t view things in a different way than expected. She encouraged the audience to think outside of the box, to challenge expertise, which was a sentiment echoed throughout many of the day’s talks. Perry ended her talk strongly: “Dream out loud. Ask questions. Believe in yourself.” Though verging on trite, it left a smile on our faces.
Up next was Tom Weiler, a physicist and professor at Vanderbilt, who displayed a long, densely worded slide at the start. No! The dreaded death by PowerPoint! It was truly distracting. Should I read or listen? What is he saying? Wait, I missed that. What’s a neutrino? What is he talking about? When he playfully commented, “this doesn’t make sense in words,” your correspondent closed her eyes, relaxed her furrowed brows, and thought there must be a better way to explain this.
Say it simply. Complex, dense, complicated explanations are the quickest way to lose the audience’s attention. Also, avoid explanations like “for the reason I alluded to earlier.” We don’t remember the reason you mentioned earlier, whether that was one minute ago or fifteen. Rinse and repeat all of your material. Beat it over the audience’s head with a stick if you have to. We’d rather hear something too many times than not enough.
Craig Havighurst’s talk on “Hearing the Difference: A life’s journey in listening” was a great illustration of how to effectively use sound in presentation. He began with a story about his personal history with music, which was an effective way to open the talk because it made each of us in the audience think about our own histories with music. His use of sound was great because it precisely supported his main point. To demonstrate tuning an instrument, he said, “Listen to the warbling sound here,” and then told us to listen to how it becomes one sound. He played the Beatles and Miles Davis, imploring the audience to work to hear all the different parts of the music. Havighurst did well to use clear statements to structure his talk. For example, “the takeaway from this,” “today I’ve told you,” and “to conclude.” These little phrases are an excellent way to keep your audience’s attention by providing them something of a roadmap for the presentation.
After another few talks and a delicious lunch, Amanda Little talked about the app that could save the economy. Little started strong by listing everything her and her family had used recently that was made by or relied on petro chemicals. The list was humorously long, a roll of paper spilling onto the floor. The visual was a good way to make it clear how dependent we are on fossil fuels. Little had some trouble with her microphone, which remained a distracting problem throughout the presentation (at times the audience had to yell, “Mic!”). However, her slide deck was full of great visuals. Most of them followed our rule of thumb of few words and large visuals, and they effectively supported her talk. Her main problem came when explaining the slides. She often stumbled over her words and used a lot of filler words: um, um, uh, hmm, etc. Clearly, Little’s talk would have benefitted from simply more practice. This was true for many of the speakers throughout the day.
Remember to practice, practice and when you think you’ve practiced enough, practice one more time. It is tedious and might feel unnecessary, but it will pay off in the end. Little had excellent information to share with the audience, and her talk was very interesting indeed, but a lot of its strength was lost because of lack of preparation.
Stephen Paletta, who won Oprah’s Big Give, spoke about philanthropy, and gave one of the best talks of the day. He was enthusiastic and energetic, which are two qualities in a presenter whose importance cannot be overemphasized. A presenter’s excitement impacts the audience, and likewise a presenter’s boredom infects the audience. As a presenter, your demeanor matters in a big way. Be excited, and we will be too. Paletta also used repetition very effectively throughout the talk. “That is not a philanthropic life… That is not a philanthropic community… That is not a philanthropic world…” He was excellent at reinforcing his main points through repetition and clear organization. Not enough can be said for clear organization in a presentation; it is the easiest way to hold an audience’s attention.
Much more can be said about this year’s excellent TEDxNashville talks, but we’ll end with director of Garbage Dreams Mai Iskander’s musings on storytelling: “Through stories we are connected to each other. People listen to stories, not facts. We must look outside our narrow view of life, and we can do that through stories.”