Seducing a
cheeky audience
Talking in public is not an easy task for me.
I feel like a gazelle ready to be eaten by hundreds of lions.
Many times I think that I make it more complex than what it really is, but the audience scares me, especially when it’s highly prepared and ready to make any kind of comments and remarks. But the truth is: confronting with hypothetical colleagues is always a good experience so I must learn how to tame my fears.
Back to gazelles and lions, I want to tell you about the two days of talks I recently had in Amsterdam. I attended the FITC Conference, which in short means Future, Innovation, Technology and Creativity.
An amazing experience!
I’ve been overwhelmed by a positive vibe, I could really feel it. The profound curiosity in the future was constantly in the air and the speakers were there to trigger it even more.
The event offered over 40+ presentations held by the best innovative and creative thinkers around the globe today, so I had the opportunity to hear about new designers, learn what other creatives do, but most interestingly I had the chance to analyze different ways to seduce an audience.
Everybody did the same two things: introduce themselves and then talk about their works (some more than others). But the way they interacted with the audience was very different from one speaker to another.
I grouped them in three main personalities:
- The “super ego”
He has a topic to talk about but since he is too eager to show his works, he just put a couple of quick slides about it somewhere in the middle of his 45 minutes talk, and the rest is all about his prestigious creations. His works are amazing but this doesn’t justify this attitude, I think. Therefore first things first: be on topic. Which means that most of your presentation has to be about the topic described on the schedule, because the audience is expecting that. I think that it’s possible to digress on other things, but shortly. If your works are very much related to the topic, well this is another story. - The “crazy-theatrical-entertainers”
The theatrical-entertainers use extra tools to entertain the audience, not only their voices and great slides but they’re masters of the stage which means that they walk and interact with the audience. But the real “craziness” (in a good sense of the word) is something that I experienced for the first time during the FITC It’s one step further from any other presentations I’ve seen so far. I’m talking about real time interactions with the presentation in itself, through unexpected overlays added to the slides, run by an app and controlled by a fancy physical device. There’s a danger though, this craziness has to fit yourself, it shouldn’t be over the top because it might seem forced humor and the audience doesn’t want that. - The “mysterious teacher”
He doesn’t want to show his works upfront but maybe just at the end of the presentation, so he prefers to leave mystery around himself rather than go into details about his projects. He shows how he thinks and let the audience wonder about his point of view. The core of the presentation is really the main topic shown on the schedule and this is amazing. It really tells you something that you didn’t know before, but it might be very specific and not understandable by everybody. So go in deep but don’t exaggerate.
What really adds value to a talk is a speaker that is just himself and doesn’t try to be someone else.
In order to be yourself I believe that you need to be confident in what you do and this is something that is achievable through hours and hours of practice.
In conclusion, if the audience is the lion and I am the gazelle, I want to be the smart gazelle. Let’s practice then!
