The Mobile Presenter

We've organised 3 TEDx events in Stuttgart so far and I've been involved with all of them, mostly in the interaction with our speakers. So here are some first lessons that I've learned from these 3 events. These are mainly aimed at other organisers (not necessarily restricted to TEDx events) but if you're a speaker, you may also want to take a moment to think about them.

Something that I've noticed when people give presentations to smaller groups, e.g. in a small room or when everybody sits around the same table, is that the speaker is sitting down during their talk. While this may be suitable for some situations, I'd argue that most of the time, the speaker should be standing up, even in a more "cozy" setting.

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?