Great Presentation. Too Bad The Audience Only Got 85% Of It.

Last Wednesday I went to what is called “Enrichment Night” at Entrada, a club I belong to.  As the presentation began, the wireless microphone that was used to project the presenter’s voice stopped working.  The presenter continued without the microphone.  A few minutes later, a new working microphone appeared. The presenter not wanting to be bothered with the wireless microphone asked the participants if they could hear her okay. Obviously, the answer was “yes”.  She continued the hour long presentation.

I then noticed the body language of the participants as well as my own.  People were sitting forward and straining to hear what was being said.  I noticed that I was able to hear only about 85% of what was being said. The female voice is somewhat more difficult to hear than that of the human male species.

The presenter did an excellent job of preparing for the presentation and delivering the presentation. The on screen presentation was particularly effective and material was relevant to the audience. But, because of the simple choice of not using the wireless microphone, the audience lost part of presentation.

There is a lesson here:  We all need to be aware of when our audience cannot fully understand or hear our presentations.  Sometimes it’s just simply using the technology that’s available (like a wireless microphone or an assistive listening device).  Beyond technology here are some simple things that can be done minimize this issue:

Individually:

Organizationally:

Thanks for listening