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An Open Letter To All Public Speakers And Soon-To-Be Speakers

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On behalf of conference program managers and producers everywhere, I’d like to share some insights for all public speakers and soon-to-be speakers. Conference season is coming. Submissions are being examined. LinkedIn pages are refreshing at a furious rate. And you might soon get that email that says, “You’ve been chosen to speak at XYZ Forum in Las Vegas! Congratulations! You’re going to crush it on stage.”

As the person who once-upon-a time chose, managed, and served as your shepherd to that fateful 30-minutes on stage, here are some helpful tips to make you and your session shine.

  1. Your presentation. I know you’ve got bigger fish to fry. Your presentation probably isn’t THE most important thing in life right now, but you know what? It will be for those 30 minutes you’re on stage. Pay attention to the deadline the conference gives you and get it to them on time. And give them the final version. There’s nothing worse than running into a room late waving a thumb drive to switch out your presentation because you had a eureka moment at 2:36 am to change “that” for “which” on slide 17. You know what? No one cares. And if it’s a number or data issue, make the correction on stage. Late presentations also increase the chances for errors so get that thing in and let it go. For some tips on making your presentation turbocharged, check out this post from my colleague Marcia Rhodes.
  1. Check the agenda. Programming an event is a lot like herding toddlers after packets of Fun Dip. There are a lot of moving parts. Things happen. I’ve had speakers cancel for plane delays, traffic, food poisoning, kids falling ill, and babies being born. COVID has introduced even more issues – for instance, a keynote speaker who was denied entry 20 minutes before go-time. It happens and things change so bookmark that agenda page and hit refresh. At least have a look at the agenda before you close your eyes the night before and dream of thundering applause and lines of people congratulating you as you come off stage.
  1. Know where you’re going. Have you been to Las Vegas? The Orange County Convention Center? Those places are immense. HIMSS alone has about 25,000 people and more signs than people. If possible, check where your room is the night before and if you can’t, check over your morning coffee while updating your presentation – which you won’t be doing. See? Caught you. Find your room and make sure you’re registered for the event and your badge is proudly hanging. I’ve had speakers running down the hall while the rest of their panel were taking the stage and, while they are drenched in sweat and trying to catch their breath, we’re trying to fish a microphone down their suit coat. Being late puts you in a bad mood and the AV person is none too happy either – trust me. Come early. Get a coffee or whatever you need and relax.
  1. Introduce yourself to the AV team. They’re there all day, couldn’t care less about the conference, the topic, or your presentation – but they’re making it happen, so introduce yourself. Ask them if everything is running on time (people tend to wax poetic on stage) and ask them where to wait when you’re getting close to your go-time. Be respectful. They might not care about your AI solution, but they do care about getting your mic on and making you sound good. If you’re anxious about your video on slide 24, you can certainly ask to review your deck but remember they’re managing 3-4 screens, have a pile of laptops to coordinate and more. If they are overwhelmed or dealing with someone who brought in a late presentation, it’s best to just trust the system.
  1. Go-time. When you’re finally on stage don’t use the podium. Walk. Pace. Stalk that stage like Mick Jagger, less hips, please. These conference rooms are big, cavernous and frankly can suck the life out of you. You have 20 to 30 minutes to shine. Make eye contact throughout the room. Talk to the audience. Use stories. Anecdotes. Show pictures of your kids. Throw a joke in if that’s your thing. Make it relatable. Show, don’t tell. I had a CISO from a major healthcare org explain to a group his sleepless nights when he realized his career had evolved from keeping credit cards secure to keeping people alive. It hit home. We had a vendor at an event illustrate his story about patient experience by sharing from pictures of a serious car accident he was in – and the room was silent throughout his whole presentation. Not a single piece of text appeared and it might have been the best presentation I saw in almost 10 years.
  1. Be cool. This last piece of advice is my favorite. Be cool. Just. Be. Cool. I might have suggested you act like Mick on stage, but off stage you’re just another speaker in a room full of them. Treat the conference staff well, your fellow speakers well, and the organizing team well. After the applause dies down, thank the emcee as you leave the stage and get yourself to the AV team to let them remove your mic and your job is done. Conferences are a lot of work – look around at some point next time you’re at one and think about all those moving parts. Sure, it’s not brain surgery, but it’s a lot of work and you’re one piece of the puzzle. Be an easy piece. The easier you are, the more you connect with people, the greater chance you’ll have of being invited back. I had speakers I’d email before I even put an agenda together because they were smart, easy, dependable and dynamic. Be that.

There is more but your Golden Rule is No. 6.

Public speaking is a lot. It’s not for everyone but remember, all those people in the audience, whether it’s 150 or 7,000, are there to hear what you have to say so you’ve already been accepted. They want you. The hard part is done. The mic is on, the PowerPoint is perfect and you’re going to crush it. Just get up on stage and take a deep breath. Everyone is rooting for you!

Need some inspiration? Here is a public speaker I thought was a particularly good presenter.

How to Maximize Exposure for Your HIMSS20 Sessions that Never Happened

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In the wake of HIMSS20 being cancelled, many people whose HIMSS presentations were accepted for this year’s conference are lamenting the fact that the sessions that they worked so hard to get accepted won’t be given.

Let’s face it, there is a ton of work that goes into submitting presentations for HIMSS, including the process of preparing those lengthy and detailed applications. As a colleague described in a previous blog, “the process is not easy and takes anywhere from 12-16 hours per proposal” and “HIMSS has a less than 30% acceptance rate.”

So, you might be asking, what do we do now? For many it feels like that opportunity is lost, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are some different ways to take the content you were going to present and still get it out there.

  • Take advantage of HIMSS’ virtual conference.
  • Plan your own virtual conference: You can conduct a webinar with the information you were going to present at HIMSS, with both a live virtual presentation and on-demand access after the fact.
  • Use information from your HIMSS presentation to draft thought leadership articles and case studies. There are likely a ton of facts and statistics that were a part of the presentation that could be included.
  • Look at other conferences for speaking opportunities later in the year or in 2021 that you can submit these completed presentations to knowing that some of the stats may need to be updated and the submissions will need to be customized for each opportunity.

The cancellation of HIMSS20 doesn’t mean that all the hard work that you put into your presentations must go to waste. The show can still go on, just a bit differently.

Rhodes’ Map to Turbocharged Presentations

Rhodes Map to Turbocharged Presentations

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When it comes to HIMSS Global Conference speaker proposals, Amendola Communications enjoys a 75% win rate. That means that out of 12 speaking abstracts we write and submit on behalf of our clients, nine are accepted.

Quite impressive considering that HIMSS has a less than 30% acceptance rate. In fact, for HIMSS18, 742 proposals were received and only 224 were accepted, which means 518 were declined.

The process is not easy and takes anywhere from 12-16 hours per proposal. If only clients would invest the same time and energy in preparing their presentations! If clients were willing to carve out time for presentation training or coaching before they get up on the stage, here is what I would suggest.

Grab attention. High tech need not be dry tech. Instead of diving right into your presentation, open with a bang with one or more of the following:

  • Startling statistic or statement
  • Rhetorical question
  • Historical analogy or example
  • Quotation
  • Personal anecdote
  • Something specific to your audience
  • Something to make audience feel good about themselves
  • Promise
  • Meme
  • Short story (see example below)
  • Headline from today’s newspaper (show newspaper)

For this last one, I am quoted in the book Presentations for Dummies (as Marcia Lemmons, my former married name) sharing this very tip. I first saw it used by a business development director at Accenture where I worked in the 90’s. The biz dev director would begin his presentation by holding up a fresh copy of USA Today or the Wall Street Journal. He would point to a headline and find a clever way to tie it to his presentation. This had the effect of making his presentation more current, relevant and way more interesting.

Short stories can be impactful if you can deliver them in 30 seconds or less. I saw this technique used very effectively by a Six Sigma Master Black Belt who would tell “The Dolphin Story” to open a workshop on the Voice of the Customer. It went like this:

“During World War II a mythology developed that dolphins love people. It was a myth propagated by sailors who dolphins rescued from drowning by pushing them ashore. A crew decided to set up camp on a ship to observe this first hand. After a few weeks on the ship, they concluded: dolphins don’t love people”¦they like to push things”¦the problem is we never hear from the people they push back into sea.”

State the problem or need. Why should the audience care? Spend one to two minutes sharing evidence, data, news reports or personal experience to illustrate the problem or opportunity. Stating the challenge up-front makes the audience uncomfortable enough that they will want to stay to hear your solution. This is referred to as the “tension-relief” technique used by playwrights.

Establish a pattern. Tell the audience what to expect from you in the next hour. Provide a roadmap agenda so they can more easily follow along.

Presentation patterns can be in the form of:

  • Lists
  • Chronological order
  • Physical location (ex: Europe, Asia, N. America)
  • Extended metaphor
  • Divide a word
  • Before/after
  • Theory/practice
  • Why/how/what
  • Provider/payer/pharma
  • Classic story (three acts)

Share the solution. This is the guts of your presentation; the knowledge or expertise you have been asked to share. Tip: When creating your presentation, you can get a jumpstart by working on this section first then working on your intro, extro and other slides later. You will find your creativity will kick in once you feel confident in what you have to say and can easily build on top of it.

Finish strong! Remind your audience of what they’ve just heard. In this section you can underscore the problem or remind them of what’s worth remembering. What are they supposed to do or change? Tie your closing statements to your opening grabber so the presentation feels whole and complete; you’ve come full circle. Give a clear signal that “We’re done.”

Rethink Q&A

Many presenters make the mistake of ending their presentation with the audience Q&A. They take questions from the audience and provide answers that they may not have had a chance to prepare for. This is also the section where it is easy for a speaker to lose control of the room. We recommend taking no more than six questions before bringing your presentation to a proper close with a few choice statements. You might even ask and answer your own question at the very end. For example, “One question CIOs almost always ask me is”¦.” Then provide your well thought-out answer.

Making it work

As a society, we don’t just want to be informed. We want to be entertained too. Just look at the news today compared to 30 years ago. As they say, “Educate the best, entertain the rest.”

The same holds true for presentations. The more lively and engaging you make it, the more your audience will be interested in what you have to say. Think through the structure, grab their interest from the beginning, and give them valuable insights they didn’t know before and you’ll keep your audience riveted. Then sit back and enjoy the applause.

And if you need a little help, give us a call!