{"id":758,"date":"2010-09-16T08:44:07","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T07:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=758"},"modified":"2010-09-16T08:44:07","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T07:44:07","slug":"presenting-for-geeks-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/presenting-for-geeks-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Presenting for Geeks 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world is binary for geeks, full of computer-based 1s and 0s.\u00c2\u00a0 And in the real world too, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a modicum of binary-ness too. The world is full of people who care very much indeed how something works and those who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care at all, so long as it does.<\/p>\n

Think of it this way – most people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care about how their car works.\u00c2\u00a0 If pressed they could probably mutter something about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153internal combustion engine\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but that would be about it.\u00c2\u00a0 But they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re passionate about the fact that it must<\/strong> start in the morning to get them to work.<\/p>\n

Or think of their computer.\u00c2\u00a0 Most people wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know what an OS was, let alone be able to have conversations about which is most suited for purpose.\u00c2\u00a0 How about a camera or a phone or…. well just about any gadget – Joe Public doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really care about how they work.\u00c2\u00a0 They just need to know that when the turn them on, they will<\/strong> work.\u00c2\u00a0 Few people care about anything to do with the inside of Windows until they see the Blue Screen of Death.<\/p>\n

Life is complicated enough without making it more so by trying to understand everything<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Even for geeks, we do the same thing.\u00c2\u00a0 We take Pythagoras for granted, for example, without testing his hypothesis for validity every time we need to calculate the shortest straight-line distance between two points…..<\/p>\n

So why is it that almost every time I see a presentation by a Geek (maybe it could even be one of the defining elements of Geek-dom!) the mainstay of the presentation is how<\/strong> something works – paying particular attention to the difficult bits, because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re most important… after all, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the bits you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re most proud of, aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t they! :)<\/p>\n

Sorry folks, no one cares!\u00c2\u00a0 (Well, fellow geeks might, to be honest, but not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153real people\u00e2\u20ac\u009d! :)\u00c2\u00a0 )<\/p>\n

What people (that is, your audience) care about is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Does the product\/service\/website work?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 And by \u00e2\u20ac\u0153work\u00e2\u20ac\u009d what they mean is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Does it take away my problem?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 You might think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the best bit of CSS you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever written – what they see are rounded corners to a box.\u00c2\u00a0 You might think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the most elegant bit of add-on integration with joomla that you heard of – what other people see is a slightly faster e-commerce site.<\/p>\n

Get the idea?<\/p>\n

Try adding the words \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Which means that…\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to almost everything you say, to help your audience \u00e2\u20ac\u0153get\u00e2\u20ac\u009d why something\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cool.<\/p>\n