- Help the audience to become your co-authors.
If you actively involve your audience in your presentation EITHER give clear instructions in the beginning OR – if you do not want to spoil the surprise – make sure that the process is easy and repetitive so that the audience can figure out what is going on.
- Keep the audience in first place, your panic second.
Always remember what your goal is and who you are talking to. Make sure that the main briefing does not slip in only as a side effect. Be relaxed, don’t get derailed.
The background story #1: One of the “2 or more” teams presented their “Red Dot” project and started the presentation by having us (the audience) hold up either red or white sheets of paper. They captured the picture with a camera, analyzed it and then read us a short story. This process was repeated several times. We were not really sure what was going on. As it turned out the selection of the short story was depending on the amount of “red” in our picture. (pics to come)
The background story #2: Another team showed a complex project about driftwood that became an adventure ship and functions as a kind of exploratory museum. The original thought was about the little piece of driftwood that had made its way from a big tree to a small piece of wood in the ocean. But during the presentation this thought was stressed too little. (pics to come)
I feel the need for a disclaimer here: I am not writing this to blame the teams who dared to show non-perfect projects but because I find it more interesting to learn from feedback of how we could improve things. (Well no, actually that is what Robert Krulwich said, but I totally agree. So thanks for the valuable feedback he had for all of us.)