I am lecturing twice today at Bentley College in Waltham, MA for Professor Mark Frydenberg’s IT101 course: Introduction to Information Technology. Mark is extraordinary in the degree to which he incorporates, teaches and uses web 2.0 tools (wikis, blogging, popfly mashups) in his class.

The morning class was delightful and of course, we live streamed the entire thing on Qik.com/pistachio

I told my Twitter followers to follow this link to remain abreast of the students’ conversations and remarks via Twitter during the class. It is just a www.tweetscan.com search for “pistachio” so that everyone can follow all of the replies together and see the students’ individual introductions. It kept us all on the same page. Fun.

Next class is in a few minutes, I’ll return later to embed the video… Follow us live (if chat doesn’t work, there is probably just a time lag on the upload) at www.Qik.com/pistachio.

Next week 2,000 marketers at SAP will convene to learn and share marketing innovations. The Marketing Community Kickoff Meeting will feature:

• Seth Godin
• Ze Frank
• Dennis Howlett
• Zoli Erdos
• Ross Mayfield
• David Armano
• David Meerman Scott
• Laura “Pistachio” Fitton

www.Unisfair.com’s virtual environment will 2,000 SAP marketers for the Marketing Community Kickoff

I’m ecstatic to be in such good company, sharing my ideas about how to communicate and present more effectively. Blogging, answering questions and digging in to share ideas with the other bloggers and interact with the SAP community has already been fun and inspiring.

How SAP is running the event is exciting too. All internal blogging and discussions are on Clearspace collaborative software, and attendees will “meet” in the Unisfair virtual environment, from wherever in the world they work. I love how the event both models and teaches new ways of communication, collaboration and marketing. Can’t wait to see how it goes.

I presented to BNCA, a women’s architecture college in Pune, India in November. The client wanted their female students to feel more comfortable voicing their opinions and ideas, presenting their work and even interacting with their instructors.

A big challenge was to connect “skill at presenting” to all areas of their lives, since realistically, not all students are terribly motivated about achieving top honors in school or even becoming successful architects.

The “secondary” goal (mixed audience) was to challenge instructors to make their material more engaging and appealing to students. I gave them all tools, motivation and enthusiasm to apply to developing their voices, taking risks and communicating well to achieve whatever goals matter most to them.

We did exercises to engage everyone with the material. Students “worked on” (yes I made them get out pen and paper and run scenarios) presentations ranging from totally personal (man thinking about his 1 year old) to career (woman who focused on her thesis project).

To get your audience to connect with your material, you REALLY have to suss out (and SHOW them) why they should care.

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*”Vivas” refers to important oral examinations.

Read this blog and you’ll see a lot about audience + objective = message, what that means, and why it’s important for ALL presentations (from an outgoing voice message to a giant keynote).

This post is about what that focus on the audience doesn’t mean.

Putting the audience “first” is not pandering. You’re not up there to please, make them like you, or even, necessarily, make them want the kool-aid you’re selling. It’s not a popularity contest. You don’t even need their approval. You need their response.

When you factor the audience into your planning, you do it strategically and you factor it together with your objective. The two play off each other and that’s what determines your message (and your approach). Yes, you look at who the audience is, what their needs and wants are, etc., but then you apply that knowledge to your goal.

Sometimes you want the audience to agree with you and repeat your ideas to others. Sometimes you want the audience to disagree with you and churn up a good debate about it. Sometimes you want them to be convinced by what you say, and others you need them to play off you and take it in a new direction.

Presenting with the audience always in mind is not about giving them “what they want,” it’s about reaching them where they are in order to bring them towards your objective. You’re showing character, not compliance.

How’s it work in practice?

Professional speakers are notorious for pride in their “audience feedback ratings”. Hint: they don’t matter. When I’m paid to speak, my job is NOT to get high feedback ratings. My job is to help whomever hired me accomplish what they hired me for, because the person who hired me is the real audience and my business objective is happy clients and referrals.

When I teach a seminar, I love building a close relationship with the participants, and hold my “audience” in high regard. But I’m not playing to the audience hoping they will end the day “really loving” the seminar they took, (or even agreeing with everything I said). My objective is for them to end up better at their jobs because they’ve become more effective presenters.

Incorporate the audience into planning your message, but remember you’re trying to give a presentation that kicks ___, not merely trying to kiss the audience’s ___.

Scott at Presentation Revolution offers this very true-funny post:

“…after four years we still have not seen a drastic change in the way presentations are built, designed, and delivered today. The bottom line: most presenters are insane…

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Now, I love what Ethos3 is doing. Meet Henry is brilliant. AND, I do enjoy this post about insanity.

BUT (Yeah you saw that coming. Sorry Scott.)

To play devil’s advocate, why WOULD there be drastic change on the whole? We’ve been mediocre at presentations for millenia. Cicero, Carnegie, lots of smart folks been chipping away at it. Same for how people overall put together memos, writings, music… Drastic improvements don’t follow just because we realize things matter, or even how to improve them. Some can, and do, make drastic improvements, but overall?

As much as communicating well matters, it’s just one thing successful people need to be good at. Presentations “built, designed and delivered” by individuals probably won’t get drastically better anymore than emails will on the whole improve. Or fitness. Or personal finance. The many who know what they *should* do, don’t. And most books on the topic offer little beyond formulaic “rules” and tricks.

When it really really matters, well, that’s when Scott and I earn our keep. We help people do their jobs better by communicating effectively.

Now, if an individual kept schlepping into meetings with the same awful slides and never understood why they weren’t making progress, sure. Insane. If an organization could not break through its “sliditis”-dependent tendencies, well… ok, maybe a lot of large organizations are pretty insane.

All this said, YES, a thousand times, I wish everyday presentations were evolving faster. But I do think the major presentations, the big conferences, we have seen some pretty cool stuff. We just gotta keep plugging away at it and showing where excellence can take us.

Good training should focus on achieving results, often by personalizing the instruction. The training should ideally not end until business objectives are met. Since I teach presenting, for me this includes the objectives students need to go on to achieve with subsequent presentations. I don’t teach set programs by rote and I don’t teach to “rules of thumb.” I encourage clients to see training as a project, with “student” preparation before and mentoring after the actual training.

You can make it through the curricula, have each aspect understood and even mastered, and still not make substantive change in on-the-job performance. I believe trainers should consult to identify client needs and then apply their expertise, experience and talents to substantially re-shape client performance.

Many trainings lean heavily on hackneyed, tactical rules of thumb (again, in my world, things like slides per minute, words per line, font size, “platform skills” such as gestures, and “one size fits all” rules like never say “um”). While each tactic has its use, training is not a “one size fits all” sport.

It’s also a big mistake to treat what you are training (presentation skills, management theory, your discipline here) as the end product. Repeat after me, “what I am training is always just a tool to achieve a specific business result.” Here’s how this plays out in my work:

I teach clients to see their business presentations strategically. I develop two core abilities: how to work from the audience and the business objective/s to craft the message, and how to find individualized ways to prepare and present. I actually teach how to stop “presenting” and start engaging with their audiences. Most of all I exhort clients to know what they want the audience to do as a result of the presentation. If the presenter doesn’t know, the audience certainly won’t.

I challenge you to make your own training work more effective. Can you set aside your training “tactics” long enough to consult with your clients and keep a tight focus on what they (strategically) need to achieve?