Speakers are like paintings

There’s a power higher than the speaker, but below God. Just.

I’m talking about the person who organises the event at which the speaker, well… speaks. Of course a lot of the time that’s the same person – particularly at work, for example, but there are plenty of times when there is an interesting interaction between the speaker and the event organiser.

I’m not talking about the simple logistic-based interactions about what time to turn up, what equipment you need and so on. I’m talking about the ‘higher order’ issues of what the heck the event is about and what the audience is expecting.

Let’s take an example

I attended a meeting last month of a business group in my home region, but not right on my doorstep. Using public transport it was about and an hour and 15 minutes to get there and another hour or so to get back. Was it worth it? A resounding no.

Was that because the speakers themselves were poor? Well… they hardly set the world on fire but no, they weren’t actually bad. It was just that each of them was talking about their thing but with no integration.

By integration what I mean is this: each presentation (whether good, bad or indifferent) had it’s own story but there was no ‘over-arching’ story. It was as if each speaker was at a different event. Here’s the outline of the evening:

• Speaker One: Our organisation does this
• Speaker Two: Our organisation does this
• Speaker Three: Our organisation does this
• Speaker Four: Our organisation does this
• Event organiser: Thank you. I think that tells us nicely how we can all get involved.
• Me (thinking): Errrr… no it doesn’t

All it did was give me a set of four people talking about their organisation’s history. None of them even bothered to give me a phone number of a web page I could contact them by.

Each presentation was like a stand-alone short story in a compilation of short stories assembled only because they all had the word ‘green’ in the title. Several presentations in one event should, instead, be thought of as different chapters of a book (with different authors).

So what was the problem and who was responsible?  Certainly the speakers were, because they should have given me something I could take away and act on. But also the organiser.

Why?

I’ll put money on the fact that what had gone wrong was this: for each speaker the conversation withe organiser had simply been “Can you come along and talk about what you do at Organisation X? It’ll be a chance to raise your profile.”

Now, a professional speaker is going to know what to do with an invitation like that – but these people aren’t profession speakers they’re just people who have real jobs. They don’t realise that a presentation which simply says “We do this” isn’t going to do anything.

It isn’t going to get people to change what they do, to get them to join in – particularly if you don’t even tell them how they can do so!

Custodianship

I’ve been to a lot of exhibitions in art galleries where the choice of which artists are involved, which of their pieces are displayed, and where/how this is done, has all been been done by a curator. The effect on me as a viewere, it seems, is as much to do with the choice of art pieces and their positioning as the actual pieces of art themselves

So it is with meetings. The overall effect of the meeting is controlled by the organiser in the same way as the art exhibition is controlled by the curator more than the artists.

So what to do?

I’ve been thinking about this.

Firstly – and obviously – if you’re speaking at an event, don’t just think about your presentation. Ask yourself, and then ask the event organiser, what the purpose of the meeting is. If you don’t know that, you risk giving a presentation which might be great but still not relevant.

Secondly – don’t take the word of whoever invites you to speak about so many things. Don’t just passively accept that telling people about what you do will result in interest in what you do. Craft your presentation from the audience’s point of view. Brutally, they don’t care about your presentation – they rarely care about you at all.  They’re all sitting there thinking “What’s in this for me?”.

Thirdly – actively ask for the contact details of the other speakers and contact them. Check for areas of overlap and for areas where there’s no point in you saying something (because someone else will have already said it).

Finally – for goodness’ sake, talk to the event organiser about the overall aim of the meeting. Most organisers aren’t the equivalent of professional curators at an art gallery and they don’t know how to put different speakers together. They’re just normal people who’ve volunteered to run an organisation. Help them out and you’re helping your audience out too.