Pop quiz- what was the last presentation you were at? Try and think back, can you remember the title? What was the take home message? There was plenty of information provided, do you remember it all? Maybe the majority of it? Maybe actually very little. Ah, but you made notes, didn’t you? Do you know where those notes are? Have you actually filed them somewhere or even referred to them. In fact, the vast majority of presentations you have attended, you remember virtually nothing, you never review the notes and actually wonder why you bothered.
Or maybe it’s just me that is that cynical? Or that honest.
At the dénouement of the film Blade Runner, the Nexus robot Roy Batty hunted by Rick Deckard speaks just before his death. Batty is the ultimate robotic creation, designed for off world combat, highly intelligent and strong and yet incongruously develops emotions. His dying soliloquy speaks of his new found and soon to be lost passion:“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the Shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
This is analogous to all those presentations, business plans, audit projects, research theses and teaching programmes that have been delivered and yet so little retained through no fault of the presenters but the medium through which they have been delivered. “Lost in time, like tears in rain.”
But watch to the end of the clip. What does Batty say? And what happens after that?