Audience focused presentations and a word about encyclopedias
One of the key points that I stress when I am giving courses is that a presentation is not a bulletin of information; you are not just talking to the wall. You are in fact talking to people, so you must tailor each presentation to the needs of the people in front of you.
For example, a heart specialist may make presentations to two different audiences: a group of students and a group of GP's. The talk in each case may have the same title, let's say "Using the ECG test for Early Detection of Heart Problems", and the examples, stories, visual aids and case studies used may be almost the same for both. However, the slant in each case will be totally different. To the students, the aim might be to persuade them to visit a travelling clinic to get their heart checked. To the GP's the aim might be to help them to detect the signs of heart disease and recommend an ECG test where applicable. You have to marshal your ideas and your communication tools differently for each different task. You are not a talking Encyclopedia who's job it is to simply issue information.
On holidays this year, I came across something that echoed this point very closely. One night, I happened to be staying in quite an old house and in one very austere room the walls were lined with book cases containing many hundreds of antiquated hard-back books. One of these was the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1959. I looked up the entry on something with which I was familiar, Dublin, the county in Ireland where I was born and live. The following is the first paragraph of the description that I read:
Dublin, a county of Ireland in the province of Leinster, bounded north by county Meath, east by the Irish Sea, south by county Wicklow, and west by counties Wicklow and Meath. The area is 321 square miles and the population (1951) 170,839 apart from Dublin city [area 34 square miles, population 522,183]. Of the population, over 70% are Roman Catholics. The county includes the borough of Dun Laoghaire and, though one of the smallest counties, is among the most populous in Ireland. The central and northern parts of the county are low-lying and composed chiefly of Carboniferous Limestone, with some millstone grit to the north and northwest, and some Silurian and Ordovician rocks behind Balbriggan. The peninsula of Howth, connected by a raised beach with the mainland, is formed of old quartzite's and shale's, crushed and folded , and probably of Cambrian age. The rocks of the county show many signs of ice action.
Does this description of Dublin strike you as strange? Did you know that there were "Silurian rocks" around the town of Balbriggan? Had you spotted the evidence of "ice action"? Did you know that the area of the county was 321 square miles? Is that big or small as counties go? Do you care? I myself have played football in Howth many times, but I never realised that the ground beneath my feet was formed of "old quartzite's and shale's".
Suppose you were from Dublin and you met someone abroad who was due to spend a holiday there and wanted to know more. What would you tell them? Would you tell them about the "millstone grit to the north and northwest"? I doubt it. But that's because you would know who your audience is (a tourist) and you know what they want to achieve (plan of places to visit and possibly instructions on how to get to these places). Now imagine a different audience. Suppose someone told you they were thinking of moving to Dublin to live and they wanted your help in making this decision. What would you talk about in this case? The content of this communication would be very different. Instead of talking about places of historical interest, the weather and good restaurants, you would talk about the price of housing, public transport and job opportunities. Actually, you would probably still talk about the weather. However the key point is that the aim of the presentation, for a particular audience, drives the slant of that presentation.
The problem with the Encyclopedia account of Dublin is that there is no specific audience. The communication is to anyone who cares to read it, so the author has reasoned (rather rigidly in this case) as follows: "Dublin is a chunk of land, whatever else it is, so let’s start by defining that chunk of land in general terms". [Incidentally, the entry on Dublin in the current edition of Britannica is not quite so long and starchy - no mention of millstone grit - but it is similar in style to the passage above.]
This has led me to coin a metaphorical term for presentations, inspired by the above passage, that are not audience focused: "Silurian". When you give a presentation that is a catalogue of facts and information ("let the audience do with this what they will"), chances are it will be very Silurian. When you roll out the same presentation to different audiences without really thinking about the different people in each group, then you are probably being Silurian. When companies have a "standard approved presentation" that they insist on their employees using every time for a particular task, they are definitely being Silurian.
Don't be an Encyclopedia . Remember, a presentation is not facts, it is an interpretation of facts, in the light of a particular audience, who have a particular need.
For example, a heart specialist may make presentations to two different audiences: a group of students and a group of GP's. The talk in each case may have the same title, let's say "Using the ECG test for Early Detection of Heart Problems", and the examples, stories, visual aids and case studies used may be almost the same for both. However, the slant in each case will be totally different. To the students, the aim might be to persuade them to visit a travelling clinic to get their heart checked. To the GP's the aim might be to help them to detect the signs of heart disease and recommend an ECG test where applicable. You have to marshal your ideas and your communication tools differently for each different task. You are not a talking Encyclopedia who's job it is to simply issue information.
On holidays this year, I came across something that echoed this point very closely. One night, I happened to be staying in quite an old house and in one very austere room the walls were lined with book cases containing many hundreds of antiquated hard-back books. One of these was the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1959. I looked up the entry on something with which I was familiar, Dublin, the county in Ireland where I was born and live. The following is the first paragraph of the description that I read:
Dublin, a county of Ireland in the province of Leinster, bounded north by county Meath, east by the Irish Sea, south by county Wicklow, and west by counties Wicklow and Meath. The area is 321 square miles and the population (1951) 170,839 apart from Dublin city [area 34 square miles, population 522,183]. Of the population, over 70% are Roman Catholics. The county includes the borough of Dun Laoghaire and, though one of the smallest counties, is among the most populous in Ireland. The central and northern parts of the county are low-lying and composed chiefly of Carboniferous Limestone, with some millstone grit to the north and northwest, and some Silurian and Ordovician rocks behind Balbriggan. The peninsula of Howth, connected by a raised beach with the mainland, is formed of old quartzite's and shale's, crushed and folded , and probably of Cambrian age. The rocks of the county show many signs of ice action.
Does this description of Dublin strike you as strange? Did you know that there were "Silurian rocks" around the town of Balbriggan? Had you spotted the evidence of "ice action"? Did you know that the area of the county was 321 square miles? Is that big or small as counties go? Do you care? I myself have played football in Howth many times, but I never realised that the ground beneath my feet was formed of "old quartzite's and shale's".
Suppose you were from Dublin and you met someone abroad who was due to spend a holiday there and wanted to know more. What would you tell them? Would you tell them about the "millstone grit to the north and northwest"? I doubt it. But that's because you would know who your audience is (a tourist) and you know what they want to achieve (plan of places to visit and possibly instructions on how to get to these places). Now imagine a different audience. Suppose someone told you they were thinking of moving to Dublin to live and they wanted your help in making this decision. What would you talk about in this case? The content of this communication would be very different. Instead of talking about places of historical interest, the weather and good restaurants, you would talk about the price of housing, public transport and job opportunities. Actually, you would probably still talk about the weather. However the key point is that the aim of the presentation, for a particular audience, drives the slant of that presentation.
The problem with the Encyclopedia account of Dublin is that there is no specific audience. The communication is to anyone who cares to read it, so the author has reasoned (rather rigidly in this case) as follows: "Dublin is a chunk of land, whatever else it is, so let’s start by defining that chunk of land in general terms". [Incidentally, the entry on Dublin in the current edition of Britannica is not quite so long and starchy - no mention of millstone grit - but it is similar in style to the passage above.]
This has led me to coin a metaphorical term for presentations, inspired by the above passage, that are not audience focused: "Silurian". When you give a presentation that is a catalogue of facts and information ("let the audience do with this what they will"), chances are it will be very Silurian. When you roll out the same presentation to different audiences without really thinking about the different people in each group, then you are probably being Silurian. When companies have a "standard approved presentation" that they insist on their employees using every time for a particular task, they are definitely being Silurian.
Don't be an Encyclopedia . Remember, a presentation is not facts, it is an interpretation of facts, in the light of a particular audience, who have a particular need.
posted by Barry Brophy at 4:48 PM
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