One of the biggest stories to come out of this year’s Glastonbury Festival was a teenage boy called Alex Mann, who was called up onto the stage by a rapper called Dave to perform one of his well-known tracks. Nobody (including Dave the rapper) expected that Alex would absolutely nail every single line of this very fast paced rap song and become the star of the show in front of millions of people.
Check out exactly what happened below:
Alex has obviously been practising. But it got us thinking about how so many presenters crumble under the pressure of remembering their lines word for word. They feel huge amounts of pressure to not ‘stuff up’ their lines. However, there is a way of presenting that can help solve this nail-biting issue.
Conversational presenting
We’ve been talking about conversational presenting for years and the benefits are endless. From increasing engagement levels and lowering the presentation time, to adding more interaction from the audience and removing the pressure from presenters to remember their lines. Let us explain.
When you present in a conversational way, you start by asking the audience what they’d like to focus on. That grabs their attention and gets them interacting right from the start. You then zoom in or click into the section they show the most interest in and present that content. When zooming in you could even ask ‘What is it about X that you are interested in?’, wait for a response and then zoom into further detail.
We’ve been talking about conversational presenting for years and the benefits are endless.
This technique is the complete opposite from the panic of ‘Ah, what do I say at slide 3? Oh no, I’ve forgotten!’ You are simply facilitating a focused conversation that feels natural to you and the audience.
There’s no pressure. The audience feels more engaged. Presentations are shorter in time. And people remember more.
So you don’t need to do what Alex clearly did and spend hours and hours in front of the bathroom mirror practising your presentation …or rapping!
Contact us for a free demo of how conversational presenting can be applied to your PowerPoint or Prezi presentations.
