Speakers Need To Get A Good Measure Of Their Audience

At a conference I attended recently a senior leader complained about the quality of speakers not being up to the mark. Then he cheered up and said, “The best thing about this conference was that I met a classmate from college after a gap of twenty years.” Meeting the classmate provided more value than all the speakers put together – at least for this person. My heart sank. I was scheduled to speak immediately after lunch – the slot that is often called the “speaker’s graveyard”. It is hard for the speaker to compete with the sleep inducing effects of a heavy lunch.What do you think is tougher – to be a speaker at a conference or be part of the audience? This may be one of those questions that merit, “it depends on the speaker” kind of response. Conferences are meant to be opportunities for people to confer with each other. The speakers have the responsibility to share their ideas in a manner that engages the audience and triggers debate, discussion and conversations. That rarely happens.The first principle of designing anything is to get a firsthand experience of what the customer is going through. For the past few years I have attended several conferences as a participant and as a speaker. Here are things that I have learned about designing any gathering where ideas are exchanged.Here is a simple test. Will the audience have access to cell phones and the internet during the conference? If the answer is yes, then the speaker will need to be warned that they are competing for attention. We reach for our mobiles the moment we are distracted. Besides responding to office mails, texts and phone calls, they can play one more round of Angry Birds.People are used to watching videos of the best thinkers and speakers across the world available freely on the internet. Sites like TED.com have thousands of videos where people put across game changing ideas in eighteen minutes. Every speaker at a conference is being judged against the ideas and speaking skills of global thinkers. I believe that conferences must allocate less than twenty minutes to a speaker or sponsor.What do the best speakers have in common? The speech has four elements:

1. Interest: The audience must care about the topic. It is tragic when the speaker is the only one in the room who is excited about the idea.
2. Originality: The audience does not know enough about the topic. Sometimes the idea can engage the audience because it is counter-intuitive.
3. Expertise: The speaker has implemented the idea and can tell the audience common pitfalls to avoid. Alternatively, speakers can share their stories of failure and the lessons learned.
4. Storytelling: Just having a powerful idea is not good enough. It has to be narrated in a manner that engages the head and heart of the audience.

The conference designers must realize that they have a tough job in hand. They have competition from the Internet. They are inviting an audience that has a short attention span and they are constantly distracted by access to technology. They are also benchmarking every speaker against the world’s best.Don't miss the insightful talk by Amy Cuddy on how your body language shapes how you feelhttp://youtu.be/Ks-_Mh1QhMc------------------------First published in The Economic Times dated 25 March 2014Join me on Twitter @AbhijitBhaduri