Attention to lighting and "theatre" for successful conference presentations

All great presentations have an element of theatre to them as well as being packed with provocative ideas.  And the cast of the show is mostly in the audience.  All effective speakers engage their audience, challenging them, engaging with their reactions, playing on their minds and emotions.  Life’s too short to sit and listen to a stream of words if there is no passion behind them.  You might as well get a copy of the speech and read it through by yourself in 3% of the time.

 

And as every great speaker knows:  if you don’t feel passionately that what you are communicating is really important, don’t bother.

 

Passion engages more than anything else, but with passion you also need persuasion, so that the personal passion of the speaker connects with each member of the audience and becomes their own.

 

Yes of course it is true that different people express passion in different ways, and some feel uncomfortable about the word, preferring to think of themselves as rational, logical analysts.  But without passion, human beings become robotic, making perfect logical decisions that they care nothing about.

 

And if they care nothing about your message, why should they listen?