Jahna, I see from the time stamp of this question that you asked this prior to me doing a live desktop demonstration.

Here, however, are a couple tips for doing live desktop sharing using web conferencing:

Spare your audience any steps that aren’t critical

For example, if you log in using a user name and password, it might be worth sparing your audience the time it takes for you to demonstrate the login process. If it doesn’t add value, skip it. Instead, be logged in already and get to the point.

Have your key points outlined

A risk when doing a live demo is going into detail that doesn’t support your key points. Instead, know what your big impact points are…and realize that all other details are the supporting evidence for show how you save time, help them make money, help them be more productive, or whatever you key message(s) are.

Start with your best point first

I did this instinctively in the past, but I like the business case Peter Cohen makes in Great Demo! (great book, BTW!).

Get (and keep!) their attention by solving their biggest problem first. This might mean you’re not demonstrating every feature or demo’ing them “in order.” But you will start with the highest impact ideas, which optimize your ability to keep your virtual audience engaged.

Hope this helps! Peace~

Shelly, I love the question for one big reason: You’re thinking about interacting with your audience!

I think it depends on the nature of the presentation and presenter.

As you saw in my webinars, I prefer to talk with people during the webinar. I’m entirely committed to ending on time, but it means I often don’t have a lot of time at the end for Q&A. For me, I both pause briefly in the middle of the presentation, and as you saw, I take questions on the fly during the webinar.

To be fair, many presenters aren’t comfortable in the virtual environment, and they’re not comfortable dialoguing with the audience throughout.

In general, if you’re going to have Q&A at the end, I’d err on the side of more time (and have less presentation) for several reasons.

• Answering questions is a time for personal application. Sometimes the answer to a specific person’s question is as valuable (or more) to them than the rest of the presentation.
• Questions can clarify something confusing in the presentation. As presenters, we like to think we nail it every time, but sometimes we don’t. Time to “clean up” is useful.
• Questions are intimate. When you talk at the audience, you could just as well be a recording or broadcast. When you interact with them, you’re being social. Powerful!
• Questions often bring out mini case-studies. If the presenter has an example s/he can share, it illuminates the topic in a new and sometimes refreshing way.

So, how much time do you want to leave for questions?

Take a guess at how many people you will have attend, then take a guess at how many will submit questions (your webinar solution’s reporting tool may give you stats on how many people asked questions). Finally, estimate how many of those questions you might want to get to and plan enough time to do so.

A final thought: A webinar doesn’t have to be one-size-fits-all. Get creative!

Did you notice that I stuck around after the webinar “ended” to answer more questions? Those went on for another half hour. So we devised a new, upcoming webinar series that is “upside down.” We’re going to have 20 minute webinars with 40 minutes of Q&A.

Depending on what you’re doing, you might host a “panel discussion” that is based on audience questions. Or an “ask the expert” session. Or a facilitated “town hall” discussion.

One thing is for sure…when you are real and personal and interactive with your audience, the connection is more powerful and the experience is more valuable.

Good luck!

Steve, I do believe it.  A couple thoughts:

Pick the right battles
The reality is that people can and do use PowerPoint as documents. Honestly, I’m not going to argue this point…the division I worked in at Microsoft did the same thing. Whether it’s PowerPoint or Word in landscape format or some other software, the key here is that documents are documents…consciously.

Remember that there’s a difference between collaborating and presenting
To be fair, meetings are places where you discuss, collaborate, analyze together, and web conferencing is a great tool for virtual meetings.  The difference between collaborating and presenting is behavioral.  A presentation isn’t a document or even slides, it’s what you do to educate or persuade an audience from a starting situation (Point A) to an outcome or action (Point B).  Yes, it IS confusing that “presentation” has such a broad and indefinite meaning, so focus on the purpose of the communication, not the tools.

Make sure your own presentations demonstrate best practices
As you heard me say in the webinar, create presentations, not documents.  We won’t change the world overnight, but we can be part of the solution, not the problem. The reality is that much of our learning as adults is experiential…and it’s likely your partners are doing something they’ve seen over and over.  It’s like a new golfer learning to play by listening to Uncle Joe who plays every week, but Uncle Joe’s a hack.  The result is perpetuating the badness.

Find your own best process to create presentations and documents/handouts
Here’s what I do…as I outline a presentation, I’m creating the basis for the handout that summarizes the key points I made.  I don’t to have the handout/leave behind mimic every story, every comment, every nuance…it’d be 20 pages long.  Then I transfer the concepts to PowerPoint and start adding the visuals that tell the story.  Sometimes that transfer is word-for-word (like the key points), but much of the time the concept is represented visually (in a way that would read poorly or not-at-all as a document).  In the end I’ve got a presentation that’s the best audio-visual experience I can produce, and I’ve got an document that reads a lot better than someone trying to look at a pile of slides in a .pdf.

Steve, if you’re even asking the question, you’re already on the right track!  Stick with it, and good luck!

How do you value relationships?
To be fair, some gigs are one-shot events, and it’s not wrong.  But for speakers and buyers alike, the first gig is the most expensive.  It doesn’t mean subsequent events are discounted 90%, but how does relationship fit into the picture?

Lessons learned
One client I’ve been working for consistently for more than four years.  In that time I’ve kept my fees the same despite my company’s healthcare costs going up 40%.  Do I “discount” the price?  No.  Have I consciously decided to make less real money in honor of their loyalty?  Absolutely.  Have I turned down higher paying single gigs to honor that relationship?  Yes.  Who wins?  Everybody.

Questions to explore
Speakers:  to be real, nobody ever books you for a multi-year gig out of the chute…you’re going to have to prove yourself.  Ask yourself two questions:  usually the first gig is more expensive to deliver…how much do you want to give away to prove yourself?  Subsequent gigs may cost you less to deliver, but you’ll also deliver more value because you’ve refined the material, know the audience better, etc.  Are you clear (and communicating) what that value is as it grows?

Buyers:  what’s the ongoing need you have?  Even if the speaker agrees to a cheap price, is it sustainable for either of you?  What might the difference be between someone “doing a gig to get paid” and someone who “goes over the top to deliver value and loyalty?”

How do you/they value the recording or other materials?
Go to any conference and one of the terms for the speakers is that they don’t get to make a recording of their presentation…the conference producers typically reserve that right.  Same goes for attendees (though I’ve never seen anybody get kicked out for holding up a camera).  The message, however, is clear.  This is a time-place activity, and other forms of distribution have other terms.

Lessons learned
Because making a recording of a web-based presentation is push-button simple, buyers often assume that because it’s push-button simple that it’s a given to be included.  What I’ve learned is that my intellectual property has value, and the recorded experience isn’t the same as the live experience.  At a minimum I evaluate exposure of the content and have an additional price for that.  However, there’s another enlightened way to tackle that.

One thing to consider is delivering a rocking, radically experiential live presentation and creating a recording of the same material separately (sans conversations, Q&A, etc.).  I’ve even got several clients for whom I’ve “chunked” that recording into several short, consumable recordings with a special, customized handout.  The real beneficiaries?  The audience.  Live attendees get a learning experience designed for them, and so do the on-demand watchers of the recordings.  The real lesson:  it won’t be valued if it’s not demonstrated to be of value.

One other lesson:  my own content and presentations have evolved a lot (what?  getting better at what I do?  crazy!).  I don’t want too many old recordings floating around.  I always make them a 1-year license unless otherwise negotiated.

Questions to explore
Speakers:  There’s no easy answer.  Is what you deliver easily experienced in a recording?  Is it a sub-par substitute for the real you?  Do you charge a flat-fee or per head?  The former is easy to adjudicate on a recording, the latter gets a LOT more complex.

Buyers:  The value of something isn’t what it costs to make…but that doesn’t mean as the buyer you can’t beat up your speaker for a free recording.  Will it deliver the experience you want?  Will it be ‘good enough?’  As for other materials, remember that the best visual presentations make lousy handouts, and great, well-written handouts make lousy presentation slides.  Is the takeaway for the audience useful?  Or just “get by because that’s what everyone else does?”

How do you/they value leads?
Some speaking engagements, and likewise some webinars/webcasts, may offer an opportunity for the speaker to get the registrant list.

Lessons learned
If I had a nickel for every time I heard a potential booking agent tell me how much exposure I’d get, I’d be writing this blog post from a yacht somewhere warmer than Portland, Oregon.  That said, all my business is either from someone who’s seen me walk my talk or a referral from someone who’s seen me walk my talk.  The reality, speaking a lot is the best way to get more speaking business.  Here’s another reality…you have to know your core audience.  I cater to medium and large businesses because I’m the most expensive guy in my industry, while about 94% of companies in the U.S. have 15 or fewer employees.  I love little companies (I own one), and I sincerely appreciate each time they spend $20 on amazon.com or send me a nice note.  But they don’t hire me.

Questions to explore
Speakers:  The biggest question is, “If you get leads, do you have a system for following up and monetizing them?”  If you don’t, they’re worth nothing.  If you do, what percentage of those leads are in your target market, and what’s your hit/close rate for monetizing them.  Figure that out, and you’ll know what they’re worth.

Buyers:  It’s a nice offer, but be careful with it.  Is it of value?  You might be able to get them to lower their asking price.  It isn’t?  Then you’re negotiating with no leverage.

What’s your/their benchmark for a “successful” webinar?
Here’s the painful reality.  Most webinar skills are learned like golf skills…from Uncle Joe (and Uncle Joe’s a hack, but he happens to know more than me, so I hack, too).  I hate to say it, but even the ‘models’ delivered by most conferencing companies are sub-par.  Why?  Because they do it for lead generation…and they don’t tell a speaker to go away if they can draw a crowd but suck in a virtual presentation.  The second reason is that in most cases conferencing companies’ webinars are produced by people who are execution/operational, not kick-ass presenters.  This is NOT a denigration (please hear me clearly)…it’s the reality of the business model.  Software companies are in the software operation business, not the presentation excellence business.

Similarly, blog posts tend to be dangerously shallow, telling you what, but not necessarily why and how.  There’s no “7 tips to get rich” anywhere in the world, and while someone may glean great tidbits from blog posts, they’re no substitute for a deep learning experience.

Lessons learned
The word “educate” comes from the Latin meaning “to draw out.”  In other words, you have to meet people where they are.  Some do just want a few tips, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  But life- and business-changing professional development don’t happen overnight.

Questions to explore
Speakers:  What are you going to do to get your chops in shape?  Trial and error?  Learn from somebody?  Read a book?

Buyers:  Do you want champagne on a beer budget?  (It’s okay, we all do!)  Have you established what’s important to you, your negotiable and non-negotiables?  The better you can articulate what you need, the better you’ll find the balance in the quality-price tension we all deal with.

Finally, the big one…what’s your/their experience with hybrid events?
Recently I was watching a special about the early days of the Ed Sullivan Show, and I was amazed at how a (then) very young Mick Jagger made serious eye contact with the camera…in between times of making eye contact with the audience.

The single hardest presentation scenario is trying to engage two different audiences having two different experiences.  You have two places to look, engage, and interact.

Lessons learned
The reality:  meeting planners and conferences are under tremendous pressure to reach more audiences and monetize them.  More common in terms of frequency, there’s a corporate habit of a team that’s in the same building filing into a conference room to gather around a desk phone and project something on a screen.  Either way, you’ve got the same problem that takes even more skill to pull off well.

Questions to ask
Speakers:  Will there be a mixed audience?  If so, how will you take questions?  If you’ve got handouts, who gets what and how?  If those attendees online are multitasking through a one-camera broadcast that doesn’t otherwise engage them, how might that affect their willingness to respond to your marketing follow up (if you get the leads)?

Buyers:  Frankly, most speakers are pretty naive here, meaning you’ve got an opportunity.  I’d be more concerned with answering, “How is this speaker going to make sure those remote attendees felt included and like they got their money’s worth?”

Bottom line

Speakers:  if you don’t know where to start, begin by charging the same price for your online presentation as you would in person.  Doing so communicates that you see value in what you deliver, not where you deliver it.  Then, using the ideas in these 10 questions, you can figure out where to adjust.

Buyers:  just like the publishing industry has struggled with how to charge for content online (and many have found how to do it quite nicely), remember that online doesn’t mean free.  It also doesn’t mean that you have to accept the same old thing…in fact, you shouldn’t.  Demand that the online version of a presentation has it’s own unique value to your audience.

Continuing the rock band analogy, some bands are great live, but their recordings aren’t so hot.  Conversely, some make great recordings, but their live shows are lackluster.  Moving a presentation from offline to online similarly transforms the experience for presenter and audience alike.  When it really clicks, it’s a boon for both speakers and buyers of speaking/training services…uniquely powerful in the overall mix of doing business.

When it doesn’t, well… pass the No-Doz.

Good luck!

Pricing, by definition, is a “what the market will bear” proposition.  Speakers, like writers, are a dime a dozen.  There are more who want to make it than have made it.  Supply is often greater than demand.

That said, here in part one are five of ten questions that sellers of their speaking/training services should consider to optimize their revenue.  And buyers of those services can use to better evaluate (if not negotiate) those deals when hiring a speaker for a webinar, webcast, or virtual classroom session.

What’s your/their business model?
The classic speaking business model has three parts:  speaking fees, products (perhaps for back of room sales), and follow-up consulting/training.  Some speakers speak for free to get leads because they want to sell you their services.  Some charge for speaking because it’s an irreplaceable experience.

Lessons learned
As an old timer in the web conferencing industry, I spent years selling/marketing professional services from startup to Microsoft to startup (that we sold to Intercall).  The goal of someone selling services is to tell you why you want to continue to use their services…it’s how they grow their business.  Now, however, 1080 Group is purely education, and it changes the dynamic of what you’re motivated to do.

Question to explore
Speakers:  What’s your business model?  Is it speaking for exposure?  To sell books?  To get other gigs?  If you don’t know your mix, you’re going to struggle with moving it online.  It’s not wrong to mix them, but it does change your motivation in terms of where you place emphasis.

Buyers:  Regardless of their content, does their business model align with how you want/need to serve your constituents?  Are they willing to change?  Would you want them to?  Is what they offer a one-trick pony, or can it be tailored to what you need?

What’s your/their delivered experience?
Our brains are both cognitive and affective…knowledge/fact oriented and emotional/experiential.  Some things you get in a book, and some things you can’t learn that way (or learn much better some other way).

Lessons learned
Now I’m purely in the experiential education business.  I teach people how to do it themselves, not why they want to hire me to do it for them.  You can get a piece of my brain and the 700+ virtual presentations I’ve made for $20 on amazon.com, but I know what I deliver.  It’s not just about content, it’s about experience.  By analogy, the last time I dropped $18 on a CD, I also spent $120 to go to the concert.

Here’s how I know what I do is highly experiential…because nobody who contacts 1080 Group is “just starting” webinars and trying to figure out where to start.  They start by getting a piece of software and they don’t even know the right questions to ask.  Those who call are like the government agency in the UK I talked to yesterday who said, “We’ve tried it, but now we’ve figured out it’s just not the same as training face-to-face and we need some help.”  As we’ve learned to quip, “Microsoft will teach you how to use Word, but they don’t teach you to be a writer.”

Question to explore
Speakers:  If you want to deliver an experience, have you adapted to a new medium?  So that it enables instead of inhibits great connections?

Buyers:  Is it JUST about content?  If so (to play devil’s advocate), why are you even doing a live gig?  Couldn’t a DVD or ebook serve that purpose? Make your speakers send you a recording (or at least convincingly articulate how they’re going to deliver the goods).

Is your/their material made-for-webinar/webcast or the same stuff in a new medium?
Transmission or medium theory of communications suggests that the medium affects how messages are delivered and understood.  It’s obvious if we say, “You can tell a story in a book or in a movie,” but it’s less obvious when we move our voices and PowerPoint from face-to-face to online.

The sad truth is that many (if not most) webinars are delivering broadcasts that are way worse experiences than what we’ve grown accustomed to culturally (e.g., television, movies).  They’re neither visually engaging, nor do they take advantage of the fact that they’re live (When you go to an in-person “seminar,” do you expect a non-interactive lecture?  Not usually).

Lessons learned
I got an email recently from an instructional designer at a university in Iowa saying, “I missed your live webinar, and wow!, I was actually engaged during the recording…and that’s hard to do!”  We’re all visual creatures, and we’re used to talking to people, but we don’t do it.  It doesn’t have to be that way, we just need some new skills (which, by the way, aren’t “software skills”).

Questions to explore
Speakers:   If you’re going to talk at people and 45 minutes later ask, “Questions?”, your webinars will fail to inspire.  What’s it going to take to adapt to a new medium and deliver with the same power and grace you’re used to delivering?

Buyers:    People multitask more in front of a screen.  It’s how we’re cultured.  Even if it’s a knowledge-rich event, will the speaker keep people engaged so that audience cognition and retention are optimized?

Is your/their presentation cookie-cutter or customized?
Ask any professional speaker their secrets of success, and one of the things they’ll say is that they study their audience, their idioms, politics, and business.  And then they tailor their presentation.  As a full and active member of National Speakers Association, I can assure you it’s what they’re teaching.  The challenge, if you want to be a pro, is that customization you provide takes time…a lot.  If you’re a buyer, you’ve got the same challenge.

Lessons learned
Often I’ll get a call from someone who says, “I just saw you do X, how much to do that very same thing for my organization?”  And then I take out my “some will some won’t” piece of paper that has a line drawn down the middle of it.  Some people will get it that it takes a lot of freaking time to really dial in a presentation.  By analogy, a house looks like a house when the frame goes up and the drywall goes on, but it’s the finish work that takes time and expense.  On the other side of paper is the “some won’t,” in which case I don’t spend a lot of time trying to convince them.

Questions to explore
Speakers:  if “same” is okay, it’s not wrong.  Just know where you fit relative to your competition and value delivered.  But you better get clear, because your business model demands it.

Buyers:  if “same” is okay, it’s not wrong.  Does the speaker offer to get to know your audience and organization?  Can they offer practical ways they’re going to tailor their presentation and experience for your audience?  Just know what you’re getting.  There’s a reason superstars are superstars, and it’s not because they’re cookie-cutter.

Is your/their pricing based on price or value?
All buyers make decisions on price until they see the value.  The challenge for speakers and buyers alike is that it’s hard to quantify value and experience times two.  One version of experience is that which is delivered.  One is the depth of knowledge and experience the speaker brings to the table which, assuming there’s a dialogue instead of a broadcast, adds a richness to the experience that is hard to duplicate.

Lessons learned
I had a client tell me recently they sat through a product training class from one of the biggie web conferencing providers where the trainer wouldn’t answer her question.  I asked her, “Do you think they were being rude or just didn’t know the answer?”, watching the lightbulb go on in her virtual head.  The reality for all of us that it’s not just what the instructor knows when we sit in a class, it’s sometimes the ability for us to ask a question for clarification, context, or personal application.  For some of us, that answer is as important as much of the rest of the content delivered.  Worth noting, just because someone calls themselves a guru doesn’t mean they are (swing a deceased feline around Twitter for 20 seconds and you’ll smack a pile of them).

Questions to explore
Speakers:  Can you articulate how your experience will benefit the organization in question?  Have some examples ready about how, during or after a presentation, you delivered value.

Buyers:  How are you valuing the “beyond the objectives” depth that the speaker brings to table?  It’s hard to put a number on it, but real experience has those on-the-fly anecdotes and how-to comments that add a dimension you may otherwise be missing.

Questions about what to do about recordings, mixed/hybrid events, and more?  Stay tuned for Part Two tomorrow.

Judy, unfortunately there are always limits imposed in most organizations…and you have to pick your battles.

It’s a bit simplistic, but I suggest drawing a line down the middle of a piece of paper, labeling one column “some will” and the other “some won’t.”

Sometimes others in the organization are open to evidence about how design can positively (or negatively) affect attention, cognition, and retention of learners.

And sometimes they don’t want to know, don’t want to change, or don’t care enough to want to know or change.

It’s a “company politics” thought, but you might benefit from identifying peers in the “some will” category and begin sharing with them the evidence and examples that support the case for design as a key component in how your learners learn.

One or two things will happen.

First, at very least you will get clearer and stronger in your own conviction.  You may not affect the change you want entirely, but you will find ways to apply what you’ve learned.

Two, you may succeed, even slowly, in improving what comes from the instructional designers or whomever is giving you the material.  And everybody wins!

The response itself is lengthy because I respond to her various concerns, but since over and over I see people struggle with using the wrong tools because they failed to evaluate their business, I thought I’d share.

Marzena, I think you are on the right path because you are evaluating your overall business process.  The most important asset we have is our time, and the reality is that we have both have to evaluate the tool that allows us to connect with our delegates and the extras that impact how we get that done.

Example: some conferencing platforms have registration built in saves us time doing website work, sending reminder emails, etc., and while this isn’t a function of the live interaction with our delegates/coachees, it very much changes how much effort we put in to connect and communicate with them.

I’d begin by evaluating different options just like you have.

If money were of no concern, which solution is best suits you?  Some are easier to use, some integrate more of the overall workflow, some include audio conferencing and/or voice-over-IP, etc.  There are perhaps hundreds of potential options, and I don’t think there is a “best.”  Personal preference is a perfectly valid thing to consider, too… it’s okay just to “like” the look and feel or some other subjective response to how the solution works for you.

The next step is to prioritise the “must haves” from the “nice to haves” in terms of features.

Some things you cannot live without (you expressed a preference for using video to see your audience, for instance).  When you do this evaluation, also consider 1) their impact to your time both in and out of session and 2) whether you have extra time.

Then evaluate the value of your time.

Let me use an analogy.  I use a lot of stock imagery and other visuals in my presentations, and I spend a good bit of money every month licensing those images.  Because I spend many, many hours each week looking for (or creating) visuals, I find that a good search engine in www.istockphoto.com saves me more time than they charge me for the images.  I might otherwise be able to find images for free or less expensively, but I’ve tried, and I spent a lot of time doing it.  You will find the same to be true with how long it takes you to set up and manage sessions, course catalogues, recordings, handouts, etc., when you begin using web conferencing with regularity.  And this step of evaluation may lead you to discover that, while one solution may be more expensive than another, it’s not more expensive when viewed through the lens of “total cost or impact” to me, my practise, my organisation.

Finally, evaluate tradeoffs.

Since we don’t have infinite time or money, we may settle for something that isn’t perfect, but is good enough when all things are considered…

…and this evaluation is highly specific to you, how you work, and your situation…and your audience/potential audience.  Besides technical consideration (e.g., are they on Macs or PCs,  what is their likely bandwidth, etc.), there is ease-of-use (some solutions are definitely more user friendly than others).

Adobe Connect, DimDim, GoToTraining, Webex, and many others are all good.  And the truth is that many times getting more features and richer experiences cost more.  But there is no “best” solution.

If I were in your shoes and money is a concern (I own a business, I completely understand!), I’d start with “inexpensive” for two reasons.  One, you will better learn what you like and don’t like, need and don’t need, and two, you will buy yourself some time to grow into the more expensive solution.  There was a time when I did a lot more work per event because I was watching every last euro that went out the door, but now, as described above, my time is more precious than my money, so I’m willing to pay for some conveniences.  For you, this might mean conducting more webinars with smaller audiences (capacity for larger audiences costs more), where as later you might find it worth the extra price you pay to save the time (running one webinar with 100 participants instead of five webinars with 20 participants).

All my best!

“What advice would you give to a Researcher who desperately needs to jazz up slides upon slides of charts and numbers?”

Kristen, you’re not alone.  Many folks have a challenge with the fact that they live in data, charts, schematics, etc., that can make slides look like crap faster than you can say dogpile.  Here are the questions I always start with:

What is the audience going to see?

Yes, it’s an obvious question, but think about a classically-trained musician.  On the piece of paper they see music, and someone else sees dots and lines (if not a mess).  I don’t think we abandon all numbers or words (that’d be stupid).  Rather than just ask, “Who’s the audience?” I ask “How are they going to see this?”  To answer, you’ve got to know them enough to see through their eyes.

What is the nature of the communication?

Second step…start in analog.  Is this a meeting, a discussion, a collaborative or brainstorming effort?  Or a presentation?

Many times for small, collaborative communication scenarios (including online), you’re taking time to analyze, discuss, comment.  This means you may want all the numbers, and it may mean that it’s not really a “nice looking PowerPoint” discussion so much as a “readable document” discussion for which you might be using PowerPoint.

A presentation, on the other hand, connotes that you’re delivering a point of view with a purpose (to inspire, educate, or motivate).  If this is the case, we ask the next question:

What’s the story?

In a presentation you’re trying to get someone from Point A to Point B, and the point isn’t the numbers, it’s the story.  It’s the point.

NOW we’ve got something to tackle for jazzing up the numbers, because the questions are “What’s the big point?”, “What’s the point of this slide in this point of the story?”, and “What’s the best way to tell that part of the story?”

Many times that story, that point you’re making may have numbers involved, but the presentation isn’t about reading numbers, it’s about the story.

When you DO want/need to show numbers, here are a few tips:

One, think of numbers like images. It’s not only how our brain sees them, but it’ll get you leaning toward thinking about how the audience sees them…and where you want to direct their attention through formatting, color, etc.

Two, take out everything extraneous to the point. Have one point per slide…it’s hard enough to think visually for one idea, let alone multiple ideas at the same time.

Three, remember that “the point” might be a relationship between the numbers, not the numbers themselves. And since charts are numbers formatted to help make a point, think about what that format is communicating.

Four, create different slides. If you make two different points about the same set of numbers, create two different slides so that you can format each separately for attention and understanding.

Finally, learn more about color and fonts. I’m not going to tackle those big subjects here, but I do like Stephen Kosslyn’s treatment of those in Clear and to the Point:  8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations.

Thanks Kristen!

Tim, I LOVE the question.

Here’s my experience… some will no matter what you do, and some won’t…no matter what you do.

I recently got an email from an instructional designer from a major university in the U.S. who said, “Wow!  I couldn’t attend the live event so I just watched the recording..and you kept my attention all the way through!  That’s hard to do!”

As much as I’d like to pat my own back (I won’t – it’d give me arm cramps), the reality is that audiences are multitasking even in in-person presentations.  Blackberries, iPhones, web connections everywhere…you get the idea.

I think what we should do is assume we have partial attention and plan/design/deliver for it.

CAN it be done?  Yes.

Can it be done every time with every member of your audience?

Not likely.

Assume partial attention.