It was a strange feeling. I was back in the Super Safe Classroom after 7 months of teaching solely LIVE On Line. In the online world, we are engaging our audience every two minutes. Remember, this is the Age of Distraction. Audiences are weaponised at home with unseen devices to escape from our grasp and our message. They will be multi-tasking like demons on speed, given the slightest pretext. We have to be very, very focused on keeping them engaged. Teaching live in the room, I had to suppress the urge to say “give me a green check”, or “give me a smiley face” to keep them active and onboard with me.
It led me to think about how much engagement I was getting previously with an audience. Occasionally, I might ask them to raise their hand in response to a question. This is a bit of a tricky thing. You can very quickly wear out your welcome with this type of request. There is that creeping feeling of being manipulated by the speaker. We are in the eye of the storm right now between the pre-Covid and post-Covid era, as presenters. This whole schmozzle will probably take at least a year or more to clean up, once vaccines become widely available. What will be some of the differences around giving presentations, when we get back to some semblance of normality?
In the good old days, I would be looking for some head nodding to let me know if the audience were engaged or not. Is that going to cut it anymore? Our body positioning can be very dynamic. I was at a talk in my hometown of Brisbane, where the presenter took this to another level. The speaker was introduced by the MC, “Ladies and Gentlemen please join me in welcoming our speaker today, Mr. Brown”. There was no Mr. Brown. The stage was completely bereft of presenters.
Suddenly he started. We could all hear his voice, but he was nowhere to be found. It was quite startling. We all sat there perplexed, craning our necks around left and right frantically searching for the origin of the voice we could hear. He then very slowly and deliberately walked up the middle aisle from the very rear of the hall, to the stage speaking all the while. It was a spectacular entrance, I have to say and quite bold to do it that way. I haven’t had the guts to try that yet, but maybe now I will give it a go.
As I previously mentioned, we would teach students not to overdo the hand raising bit, but what about from now on? Will live audiences be more comfortable with getting more involved in the talk? Let me make an important clarification here. I am not talking about those diabolically dreadful dross webinars, where the speakers are captured in tiny boxes on screen, like an assortment of cheap omiyage chocolates in a tacky box. These are very sad and boring affairs, with all the talking heads just droning on and on.
I am talking about LIVE On Line, where there is tremendous interactivity. “I am unmuting you Tanaka san, so please come on camera and share with us your thoughts” or “Let’s go to Suzuki san for some comments on this issue. Suzuki san come off mute and tell us your ideas please”. “Give me a green check please, if this has been your experience too?”.
Will we be calling on people for their comments on some issue? We always have a chance to get there early and meet a few of the punters as they arrive. We remember their names or maybe we made a note on their meishi. We take the opportunity to have a conversation on the topic before proceedings get underway. We could say, “Tanaka san, earlier we were speaking about this very issue. You had a very interesting take on it and would you mind sharing it with everyone. Can we get a mic for Tanaka san please?”.
Will we be walking into our audience more? Using our body language to get up close and personal. Jesper Koll is a well known speaker here in Tokyo and must the most entertaining economist in captivity. He will suddenly lurch forward to where you are sitting, in the first or second row, tower over you and hammer you with a rhetorical question. The problem is you have no idea if this a question you have to answer or whether he will answer it himself. Trust me, when he swings your way with that question, you break into a sweat because usually these are questions for which you have no good answer. He has your full attention.
The LIVE On Line rule is you must have interaction every two minutes. For the in-person talk that would be too much, I think. However, as audiences have been trained to accept more interaction with the speaker, maybe we have to lift our game and get them more involved than we did in the past. Let’s try it when we next get an opportunity to present in a real, rather than a virtual room.
