A presentation must resonate with its audience. There is no value is simply listing facts, they need to have meaning for the audience. Whether that is an inspirational talk, a research project or 3rd quarter business plans, if there is no message, the data will not resonate with the audience. It will be lost, in time, like tears in rain.
Nancy Duarte in her world challenging book on presentations, “Resonate” talks about the structure and delivery of presentations and that, effectively, the purpose of presenter is to transmit information that makes the audience change in the way that striking a bell causes sound to be emitted that is more than the simple impact, it resonates. A presentation should do the same. It should have more lasting effect that simply being experienced. It should resonate.
A failure of many scientific presentations is the mistaken belief that the audience is there to interpret data, that delivery of information will allow intelligent minds to pick through this and, that because the audience are clever, they will construct value, meaning and action from that which has been received. This places a heavy load on the audience and with no time allowed other than the immediate experience. Does it work, in your experience? Can you remember presentations delivered in this manner that have been effective? A presentation, that for you as an individual, has resonated? Should not every single presentation resonate?
The result of those rhetorical questions should bring us pause. Of the thousands of presentations received, most respondents can remember one or two ever that have resonated for them. This is not about their own failure, or that of the presenter in effort, but because of the approach to construction and delivery of the presentation. The presentations did not resonate. This must change. Those thousands of opportunities have been lost in the lecture theatre, nothing has emerged and travelled further like the sound of a bell, heard miles away. We must change presentations.
How does one make a presentation resonate? Try. That’s it. The vast majority of presenters don’t try to make their presentation resonate, they limit themselves and the audience. Whilst I humbly offer that the p cubed approach can help, literally making the mental commitment to making your presentation resonate for your audience will lead you to consider the construction, illustration and delivery in a different way. Will the presentation strike like a hammer on stone or will it resonate?