The Mobile Presenter

When you have to present an idea or a concept that goes against the way people used to do it (until now), it's very important that you make it easy for your audience to understand, accept and apply this new way of doing things. A nice example for this can be seen in a short TED talk by Terry Moore, titled "How to tie your shoes".

If you haven't seen this talk, I'd suggest you watch it before you read on. It's only 3 minutes long and embedded below.

With the advent of mobile phones and tablets, I see this happening more and more: People taking photos of the slides during a presentation.

Why do they do that? And is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Surprise can be very effective. An element of surprise will help make your message more "sticky", as the Heath brothers point out in their book; it's the 'U', for "Unexpected", in their SUCCESs formula. If you think back to presentations you attended and what you remember best, you'll often find a memory that's attached to such an element of surprise - a surprising fact, statement, or something unexpected the presenter did. Or, sometimes, just an unexpected accident that happened during a presentation.

So how, exactly, does surprise work?

The United Nations (UN) is probably not the first place you would think of going to for presentation advice. So I'm glad that Christina O'Shaughnessy, who I met again at the Presentation Zen Studio in Paris recently, pointed me to a useful series of documents that the UN has published, called Making Data Meaningful.

The best way to learn something is to teach it. This paraphrased quote, attributed to Seneca, also applies to presenting, as you've probably experienced yourself.

When trying to explain something to someone who's not familiar with the topic, you often stumble upon gaps in your own knowledge. Things you took for granted are suddenly questioned; "Why, exactly, do we do this thing in this way anyway?"