The Media Supermarket

I gave a presentation about the basics of Web 2.0. I discovered several important things, and experienced important learnings. Thank God I made some good mistakes!

1. Forget about the time, and look at the faces: Give your breaks when you feel the audience needs it. Never mind about what time you planned to give the time out. When they are listening intently and following you, it’s meaningless to stop this. After all, you have spent some good time on building and maintaining their attention. Don’t waste it. It’s like the ace in your hand. Use it wisely.

2. Magnify the relevant comments only : Most of the time you will have some people commenting on what you are saying. Some of it will be relevant and useful, and some will just be people saying whatever comes to their mind. Your response to these comments magnifies their importance to the audience. The audience is yours, and they will pay attention to whatever you tell them. Don’t try to please everyone by attending to whatever they are saying. Make sure you reward the good comments.

3. Talk to faces, not the “audience”: Try to make good use of eye contact. This means that you should connect with as many people as you can by looking in their eyes several seconds and making sure you “attract” them and keep them with you. You need to have this backed up by a logical flow of arguments. The people in the front rows can be powerful anchors for getting others to pay attention too. You can easily look in their eyes.

4. Relax!: Don’t try. Just talk to the audience. Having a loud and clear voice is essential to keeping them with you. But when you talk in a relaxed manner, you convey your confidence and you send out the message that they should listen to you.

Here is the Web 2.0 presentation.