The Washington Library Association hosted a great webinar today with Mary Ross, who talked about how to effectively create audience-focused presentations. The tips that Mary suggests seem spot on, and I’m including them with my notes below in the hope that they will be useful to Washington library staff who want to step up the interactivity and quality of their presentations.

About 50 librarians attended the webinar, which seemed like a great number to me. If you were one of them, please share your thoughts in the comments below. Whether or not you were able to attend, what do you think? Are your presentations really focused on your audience? What could you be doing better to make sure your presentations are meeting audience needs? What are you already doing that’s awesome?

My notes from the webinar (after the break):

Shift focus from what you want to say to what your audience wants to hear.

Outcomes:
– develop presentations with perceived needs of audience as focus
– write appropriate learning outcomes
– keep your presentation audience-focused (techniques)
– raise awareness of what is (and isn’t) audience-focused in a presentation

polls at the beginning of the session can help identify audience needs

presenters need to focus on the WIIFM (“What’s In It For Me?”) for their audience

tip #1 – assess the needs of your audience
– surveys, polls, prior knowledge of group, on-the-fly assessments

tip #2 – address those needs
– requires flexibility, comfort with topic
— allows you to shift your presentation to meet audience need
– write learning outcomes
— “as a result of this presentation, you will be able to…”

tip #3 – start with your conclusions and your lessons-learned
– helps audience to see where you’re going, gives them the big picture
– also gives them the opportunity to leave at the beginning and not waste their time

tip #4 – avoid too much detail about your situation
– tell them just what is needed to understand the conclusions / lessons-learned

tip #5 – limit the number of slides, keep the clean and simple and use them where they add value
– powerpoint is a VISUAL medium, its value lays in how it is used

tip #6 – create a handout that is NOT the powerpoint slides
– many conferences are going green, want handouts online instead of printed
– the handout can cover the things you may not get to if you adapt away from the original presentation
— that way those things aren’t lost

tip #7 – anticipate and welcome questions and comments
– create the space for them to ask questions (it isn’t enough just to tell them they can interrupt you)
– be conscious of your time, sometimes you have to move on
– create a parking lot to store questions where you can answer them later
– beware of people who hijack the presentation to move at THEIR pace, not yours
– ask “what questions do you have?” instead of “any questions?”

tip #8 – use stories and examples
– connect your topic to your listeners, stories make people more receptive to what you’re saying, makes people less judgmental because it’s your story

tip #9 – plan the presentation for LESS than your allotted time
– especially important in panels, can make it real tough for the last panelist!

tip #10 – practice so that you are comfortable with your content and can change focus if necessary
– makes you less nervous and more flexible

how do you deal with nervousness?
– breathe, meditate, exercise, and drink lots of water
– start off with a conversation, give time to warm up
– your audience wants you to succeed, treat them like friends you want to talk to
– pick out someone who looks friendly and go back to them for reassurance
– get comfortable with technology beforehand so you know things will work as planned
– get the help that you need; you don’t always have to do it on your own!