Thursday, May 10, 2007
Best of the Best -- good idea
Okay, so from doing speaking engagements at conferences, I've attended quite a few on eLearning -- and sat in on some sucky presentations, as I think we all have. You can usually tell, right? These people look good, have an impressive bio, a clever presentation title (!), open strong, and then... well, nothing. It usually takes about 12 minutes, in my opinion. At the 13 minute mark, that's when you look around and realize you made the critical error: you sat way too far from the door to slip out, discreetly.
Anyway, in those cases, what can you do? Sometimes, (rarely with the really sucky ones), the presenter will start out by saying: "Hey, if you start to realize this presentation is not for you, feel free to leave. It won't hurt my feelings!" But I think it would rarely occur to a really bad presenter to start out this way.
I know a lot of people who just bolt, but being a presenter -- and having taught at the college level for 10 years, I guess I'm a little more sympathetic. You can learn from anybody, right? -- even if it is learning how NOT to run a session.
But I just learned that the Training Conference has taken a really interesting approach to this. They contacted me because of a presentation on Game-based Learning I did at a Training Conference a couple of years ago. They said that based on the participant feedback, mine was judged as one of the "Best of the Best," and they want me to speak at the next Training conference in Utah, this October.
Okay, so this is smart on so many levels. (1) You appeal to a presenter's innate pride -- okay, ego -- and I'm sure they'll pull in a lot of the presenters they've contacted to do their sessions. (2) The folks who put on the show are going to see an increase in their tradeshow business. As a small business owner, we don't have the deep pockets that some of these large monster companies have. The best opportunity we have to meet people (aka. prospects) interesting in Game-based Learning is to speak at a session and then do 'booth duty.' Yes, I confess, I can be a shameless sales guy. Finally (3), the participants at the conference get better quality sessions. Hopefully, they really mean it, when the folks at Training say this is the "Best of the Best" and all of us can benefit from a great learning experience.
I guess we'll find out in October. Just in case, make sure not to sit too far from the door.
Anyway, in those cases, what can you do? Sometimes, (rarely with the really sucky ones), the presenter will start out by saying: "Hey, if you start to realize this presentation is not for you, feel free to leave. It won't hurt my feelings!" But I think it would rarely occur to a really bad presenter to start out this way.
I know a lot of people who just bolt, but being a presenter -- and having taught at the college level for 10 years, I guess I'm a little more sympathetic. You can learn from anybody, right? -- even if it is learning how NOT to run a session.
But I just learned that the Training Conference has taken a really interesting approach to this. They contacted me because of a presentation on Game-based Learning I did at a Training Conference a couple of years ago. They said that based on the participant feedback, mine was judged as one of the "Best of the Best," and they want me to speak at the next Training conference in Utah, this October.
Okay, so this is smart on so many levels. (1) You appeal to a presenter's innate pride -- okay, ego -- and I'm sure they'll pull in a lot of the presenters they've contacted to do their sessions. (2) The folks who put on the show are going to see an increase in their tradeshow business. As a small business owner, we don't have the deep pockets that some of these large monster companies have. The best opportunity we have to meet people (aka. prospects) interesting in Game-based Learning is to speak at a session and then do 'booth duty.' Yes, I confess, I can be a shameless sales guy. Finally (3), the participants at the conference get better quality sessions. Hopefully, they really mean it, when the folks at Training say this is the "Best of the Best" and all of us can benefit from a great learning experience.
I guess we'll find out in October. Just in case, make sure not to sit too far from the door.
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