My friend and colleague Dave Paradi wrote an incisive and thought-provoking post about the “backchannel” — social media’s contribution to audience interaction during a presentation. Dave makes the strong point that for a majority of presentations, using Twitter or FaceBook to communicate with a larger audience or with the presenter is not realistic. If you are in a boardroom with a dozen people, for instance, it would be implausible (not to mention rude) to be busy tweeting away about the presenter. And with whom would you tweet? What hashtag would you reference? It’s all way too vague.

With a larger audience, the scenario is more realistic, and Dave used last year’s PowerPoint Live as an example. We established #pptlive as the hashtag for use across the four days so patrons at the event and interested community members not attending could stay current.

Even in this environment, backchanneling remains challenging, and this is why I do not share the enthusiasm that some of my colleagues hold for Twitter as a viable vehicle for audience interaction. That said, I want to offer up two scenarios in which it could provide a useful service.

1. In a webinar

While evolving, most webinar plumbing offers deficient means for real-time interaction. Worse, many of the hosting agencies who hire me to give webinars do not allow questions during mid-session, insisting that I wait until the end of a 90-minute webinar before taking them. They tell me that it is too difficult to monitor the questions and selectively unmute phones. When I suggest the onscreen chat module as an alternative, they tell me that for my own protection, they do not enable it, citing too many presenters who have gotten derailed by it.

A Twitter hashtag circumvents all of this foolishness. I can take questions from my audience members and there is not a darn thing that the moderators can do about it…um, I mean I don’t have to trouble my hosts at all. Nobody sees me when I look down at my phone or on my second monitor, I can keep a browser window open for minimal distraction.

2. At a well-staffed conference

Even in a larger venue, using Twitter for audience interaction is problematic. My presenting style is hardly formal; I regularly engage in banter and repartee, even with an audience of over 200. Nonetheless, the few times that I have monitored a backchannel on my handheld, it has taken me out of my rhythm. To say nothing about having to put my damn reading glasses on in order to read a tweat, I find the experience to be more of a barrier before my audience than a bridge to them. And if I feel this, with my loose speaking style, I suspect that a majority of other presenters will not warm to it, either.

The missing puzzle piece is to have savvy room monitors. At the Presentation Summit, we normally ask our room monitors just to greet people as they enter a seminar ballroom, check for badges, and assist the presenter with any various and sundry needs. Not anymore—now we will ask our room monitors to monitor the Twitter tag and report on any questions or comments that they think would add to the fabric of the particular seminar. I think that’s a much better solution than the presenter trying to do it him- or herself.

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I’m not sold on Twitter and FaceBook as a means to reach a presenter in real-time. I might never be, and in that regard, I’m with Dave Paradi on this one. But it deserves the benefit of the doubt, and the above two scenarios are ones in which I am willing to extend it. I’ll keep you posted…

Let’s start with full disclosure: our family watches American Idol regularly. I’m not terribly proud to report this; it is one of the more poorly-produced shows on television and many of its stars are self caricatures. But it is an opportunity for a family with two headstrong teenagers to actually engage in an activity together, and as I think about it, not since the Carol Burnett Show has there been good singing on television. And most of the time, the singing is good.

As I watch the contestants perform in front of live audiences and large television audiences, I cannot help but try to draw parallels to my chosen profession. But when I really think about it, few exist. American Idol might be a fast track to fame for a chosen few, but the rest have to play by rules that few others have to. Idol contestants are typically victimized by three things:

1. They are amateurs. Most of those who make it deep into the competition have had no experience before large audiences and do not know how to engage them. In many cases, even simple performance skills—such as how to hold a microphone or how to move on stage—elude them. This is not meant as a criticism; the rules require that they be amateurs. Simon Cowell conveniently forgets that fact, a few of the younger girls cry, everyone boos him, and it all makes for good television.
2. The standard is impossibly high. This too makes for good television and these kids certainly learn about poise in the face of pressure and strength of character in the face of criticism. But here is my pet peeve: all you regular viewers out there, what is the most common criticism leveled against the contestants (after being “pitchy,” a word I had never heard pre-Idol, despite growing up around accomplished musicians)? Bad song choice, right? They are constantly being harangued for not choosing the right songs. Yet of all of the teen and young-20s pop stars in the top 100 at any one time, less than  50% of them write their own songs or choose which ones to cover. They have producers and studio executives that do that for them. Why are these amateur singers being asked to do that which most of today’s professionals do not even attempt?
3. The scrutiny is extreme. I need look no further than our family’s debate du jour. One of my favorite singers this season is Crystal Bowersox, an unpretentious and wickedly talented young woman. She is everything that is good about Idol—an unassuming mom from a town in Ohio that would probably never have been discovered were it not for Idol. My wife, Becky, however, does not think as highly of her as I do. While she likes Crystal’s voice just fine, she describes her as “too earthy.” That might be a completely legitimate point of view. Bowersox is not glamorous, does not dress particularly well, and puts on no airs whatsoever.  Becky’s right, she is earthy. But I have to wonder: Of all of the artists in Becky’s iPod, in how many cases does she know what the singers look like? In most cases, we like our singers because they sing well—we have no idea about anything else. For all she knows, maybe half of Becky’s favorite artists are earthy. One of my new favorite bands is called Porcupine Tree and I don’t know the first thing about them. Maybe they look like porcupines. On Idol, if you look like a porcupine, you’re not going to win.

The profession of public speaking is different, and thank goodness! Of course your appearance makes up part of a first impression; this is America, after all, where actors can be elected Governor and President and Sarah Palin can, um, be Sarah Palin. But in most cases, audiences care more about whether you can deliver the goods. In a land where “Death by PowerPoint” is in everyone’s lexicon, business presenters don’t have to do a whole lot to distinguish themselves from others. It is not nearly as important what you look like or whether you know how to hold the microphone properly. If you know how to craft an engaging message, if you can speak with passion, and if you can get out from under their slides, you are going to do well.

I don’t mean to suggest that these are easy things. Getting an audience to feel the weight of your message can be very difficult (especially if you get buried by overladen text slides). But they are much purer challenges than the ones with which Idol and other reality shows saddle their contestants.

All of this said, there is one aspect of American Idol that has made its way to our discipline as presenters. As the legions of Twitterers continue to gain traction, your audience can vote on your presentation as if it were a performance. Imagine, your very own Simon Cowell, telling you that your presentation was self-indulgent and horrific.

This from one of our readers, Melanie Bozzelli of Twinsburg OH:

I hope you can help settle a friendly debate we are having over the use of bullet points. In your book, you argue that bullet points should be displayed all at once on the slide, and then the presenter will discuss them with the audience.

We prepare many presentations for an online audience and our research and testing have shown that if the slide loads all at once, then the user may go off and look at other things online, and not pay attention to the presentation. They typically scan the bullets, realize they have a few minutes to wander off while the narrator is speaking, and then check in to see if the presentation has advanced to the next slide.

If the bullets load one at a time and are “spoon-fed” to audience members, they stay engaged with the online presentation.

Since our presentations are often created with multiple contexts in mind (live audience,on-demand online, etc), I wonder if there may be a solution to accommodate each audience, without losing or insulting them.

Melanie brings rise to a very interesting point: how the webinar culture influences conventional thinking. A lot of this comes down to your take on protocol during webinars; here is mine: I don’t try to fight the impulse that webinar audience members have to multitask; I consider it to be a fact of life.

This has been a liberating conclusion for me. Instead of fighting it, I try to cater to it. If my audience members are going to multitask anyway—and if they can’t, they might choose to tune out altogether—I feel as if I can make it easier on them by doing an all-at-once slide build. If I try to string them along, they might resent it. If I give them the download all at once, they can then keep one ear on me while they are checking their email or hanging out on FaceBook. Then when I change topics, they are in a position to tune back in.

I’m not sure this is a majority viewpoint; I’m sure there are some who tilt at this windmill and hope/expect to garner 100% attention from their webinar audience members. I just don’t think that’s realistic.

Better to swim with this tide than against it, I say. Should you adopt that point of view, your life is made easier by not having to create multiple decks for multiple audiences.

Other principles of presentation design still prevail, I must add. This is not permission to overload your slides with superfluous verbiage. Keep those on-screen points short, sweet, and pithy!

Like many sports enthusiasts, I sat with rapt attention last weekend watching 59-year-old Tom Watson defy father time and all matter of plausibility by coming within one putting stroke of winning the British Open. His grace and poise impressed all of us; however, the eventual winner Stewart Cink impressed me even more, for two reasons:

1) He knew that 99% of the gallery and worldwide television audience was rooting against him in the four-hole playoff he waged with Watson, and there was absolutely nothing that he could do about it.

2) During his victory speech, he invoked his faith in an unusual and refreshing way.

While this was not a hostile audience, Cink knew that he was in a delicate situation, going up against an overwhelming sentimental favorite (the Scotland gallery was rooting for Watson even over the British golfers in the field). He handled this situation the way that I would counsel a client who was about to give a presentation before a potentially disagreeable audience: with respect, earnestness, and grace. Cink did not take the partisanship personally, he respected and appreciated the gallery's biases, he competed earnestly and without fear, and won with grace and class.

Even more noteworthy was how he credited his faith for helping him win without being obnoxious or polarizing. This is a touchy subject, I know — I probably shouldn't even be blogging about it. I abhor when athletes with strong religious backgrounds remark how "God was on my side today," or solemly state that "God just didn't want me to win today."

Please.

There are few things more ridiculous, and more off-putting, than the notion that God cares who wins one of our recreational pastimes. I think our supreme being has better things to do than take a rooting interest in us. But Cink phrased it differently:

"I lift this [trophy] up to God for giving me the ability to withstand the pressures and obstacles I face on the golf course."

To my ear, this is a completely different message. Cink knows that winning or losing is a function of his performance and that he is solely responsible for how well he performs. In order to perform well, everyone needs to find his or her inner strength and Cink has found his through his faith.

His was not an in-your-face expression of his religious beliefs. It was not intended to be divisive or evangelical, and I don't believe anyone took it that way. I think that religion finds its highest form when it gives people the strength to do great things, and that was what Cink represented with his eloquence.

As a presentations coach, I often spend many hours helping people find that inner strength — sometimes in vain. As a pramatist, I don't much care where it comes from. Some people find it through a confidence they were born with, some from a passion for their work. Some get it from the love of people close to them, and others from their faith.

But the presenters/performers who generally have difficulty tapping into this reservoir are the ones who describe their primary emotion as fear of failure. They become far too conscious of external matters and rarely channel their inner being, the one that usually knows innately how to accomplish the task at hand.

If God is the ingredient that can get them to turn inward and find the strength of character to perform at their best, that is a happy ending, in my book.

Your mileage may vary; we're talking religion, after all. Do you agree that Stewart Cink allowed his faith to bring out the best in him and his was a simple acknowledgment of that? Or do you nonetheless feel that his remarks were over the top and inappropriate? If so, let me have it…