Presentation Games -- Tips for Seminars, Classes, Workshops, and Meetings

Meeting and Presentation Starters!

Note: I started preparing this article long before the Covid-mess came into being. So, this article mentions physical locations and logistics for those locations. I'm working on a separate article that will discuss the new paradigm of online-only presentations.

Where's the Presentation Going to Be?

Search for a good location for your presentation.

If you live in a major metropolitan area, you most likely have facilities such as hotels and convention centers that have accommodations specifically for events such as meetings, seminars, workshops, and conferences. These events can range from small meetings of 10 to 15 attendees to seminars with up to a thousand or more attendees. And, hotels and convention centers usually have a "guest-login" option for getting connected to the Internet (if you or your attendees need this connection for your presentation).

But even if you are not planning on a major production such as that which would require big-city style hotel or convention center facilities, you can still put on a good presentation.

If you don't have a hotel or two that may have a few meeting rooms available, sometimes your local community college or public high school will be willing to rent their classrooms or gymnasium facilities for your event.

Trending are those facilities known as "co-work" or "co-working" facilities. They usually provide an open area with desks and chairs for freelance and remote workers who, along with the rent of that area, can make use of the enclosed meeting rooms for small presentations during work hours and then the whole open area for presentations during after-hours. Co-work locations are good because they will generally have fairly good network connections if you or your attendees will be needing network access.

If these choices are not options for you, check to see where the local VFW, DAV, or Masonic hall is -- they may be able to rent their hall for your event. And, check on your local Rotary, Elks, Moose, Lions, and other social organizations -- find out where they meet. Local restaurants may also have meeting rooms that they rent out for meetings and seminars.

This is a unique location for a workshop that I attended while on a cruise a few years back. It was an onboard workshop on Microsoft Windows 10 Photo Editing techniques in one of the ship's conference rooms. When you are out to sea with not much else to see, this can be a good option.

The Room -- Half the Fun is Getting There.

Once you have arranged for your room (you and your participants can be in only one room at a time, so we're not talking about multiple rooms here--although if you have a big conference, you may have many rooms for the breakout sessions and workshops), be sure to check out the facility and the rooms at least two times BEFORE you choose to commit to it, and again two times AFTER you have committed to it. Why? Maybe you can see how the room is presented for other meetings and conferences -- you'll be able to see how the establishment presents the room and you'll be able to "fine-tune" it for your presentation.

Seating Arrangements -- What is the Purpose of Your Presentation?

For Formal Training -- Classroom Style

If your presentation is purely training from the front of the room with the viewgraphs, PowerPoint, or other visual aids, then have the room arranged in "classroom" style with desk-like tables facing the front and chairs reasonably spaced for "elbow-room" and with room put pull the chairs back from the tables to enable easier getting in and out of them. The tables are good for keeping water and snacks available and accessible as well as providing a platform for writing materials for taking notes.

The long classroom style table/chair arrangement. Note the spacing of the chairs and the tables to enable easy access. Note also the multiple presentation screens and audio-speakers. This arrangement allowed for a very pleasant training situation.

For a Mealtime or Interactive Group Workshop Presentation -- Round-Table Style (or, the Class-room Style would work, too)

This conference included the round tables to enable attendees to eat during the mealtime presentations. The seating arrangement wasn't changed for the regular non-meal presentations. Although the round tables were great for small-group projects during the break-out workshops, the round tables aren't the best for watching or taking notes during presentations from the front of the room because only one side of the tables will be used during the presentation (as seen here). At least this arrangement left a lot of room between the tables for easy access.

The "Board-Room" Presentation

The small, board-room arrangement like this is great for planning sessions and presentations that might involve the team leads for all aspects of a project. Even from the back of the room opposite the video screen, the attendees can effectively see the information on the screen (if you don't put too much on the screen [if doing PowerPoint]).

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

Round 1: HIDE AND GO SEEK

Have you ever arrived at a hotel or conference facility and then you haven't been able to find the particular room you needed to be in? Many hotels and conference centers have signs like directories at the entrances that guide people to the events taking place that day. Those are the directories that say "YOU ARE HERE" on a map display of the facility and with a listing of all events taking place that day, with the appropriate room numbers/names.

Well, with this group being a bunch of detectives and forensic CSI folks, they probably would be able to figure out where the room was anyway. But this was a nice touch by the hotel. (I was tempted to draw a chalk outline of a person in front of the door ... but I didn't. Yellow-tape imprinted with "Crime-Scene - Do Not Cross" or foot-prints leading to the door would have also been fun.)

Unfortunately, many hotels in areas that aren't accustomed to major functions don't think of this helpful guide for attendees. In fact, I've been to a bunch of meetings, workshops, seminars, and even conventions where the hotel desk clerks and concierge ( ! ) were NOT aware of any of the meetings, let alone the one I wanted to get to. I wasted a lot a time and increased my stress level before I finally found the right hallway and room.

Sometimes the one who can tell you WHERE and WHICH ROOM the meeting you want is... is a member of the janitorial or maintenance staff (if it's on their schedule for the day for set-up and clean-up, they'll know about it).

What's the lesson here? If you are going to be putting on your own event -- meeting, workshop, seminar, conference -- be sure that the hotel staff (desk clerks, concierge, maintenance staff, and others) KNOW what and where your event is! If possible (and there should be no reason why it isn't possible), have maps with directions printed for your event and have them at the hotel or event facility's reception desk. At least you won't have attendees getting lost and not showing up to your meeting.

Be sure that the staff at the facility where you are holding your event KNOW where it is -- check with the concierge, the front desk clerks, and the event management staff to ensure that they're aware of the event!

Round 2: SHAKE AND BAKE!

Once you have your room established, check the thermostat. Most attendees are aware that the meeting room may be on the chilly side and if they are experienced attenders, they'll have a light sweater or jacket for backup. But they shouldn't have to bring an Antarctic parka -- you should not have the temperature set below 68 degrees F.

Participants find it very hard to take notes when they are shivering, their teeth are chattering, and their hands are shaking too hard to even hold the pen or even pour the ice-water. If you have an all-day seminar, verify the temperature throughout the day during the breaks.

Likewise, your participants shouldn't be dripping with sweat after the first few minutes in your room. Don't have the room set for higher than 72 degrees. Yes, older folks and those with special needs may need the room cooler during the summer or warmer during the winter. Know your audience and make sure that the room temperature is comfortable for most of your attendees. If you can't adjust the temperature yourself, talk with the hotel staff, or if your meeting is large enough to warrant an assistant, have your assistant talk with the hotel staff to get the temperature regulated.

Round 3: ROOM WITH A VIEW!

It's hard enough to pay attention to the presenter and the material being presented, what with all the cell-phones and other distractions going on (many presenters display a poster or graphic reminding attendees to be polite and silence or turn-off their electronic devices) . But by all means, if your meeting room has windows, close the curtains or have the participants face away from the windows. Even better, get a meeting room with NO windows and with the doors at the back or side of the room.

I have experienced a bunch of meetings that were held in a Room With a View.

One meeting was held at a hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The speaker had taken great care in setting up the room -- but his back was to the windows, and evidently he wasn't aware that the windows faced a set of very active runways of the Albuquerque International Airport and Kirtland Air Force Base. I wonder if he noticed the heads in the room all following the planes as they landed and took off in the view behind him.

View of Las Vegas Strip and Airport from a second-story conference room during a meeting. Yeah, it was tough paying attention to the presenter when all this activity was going on outside the window. Would have been easier if the curtains had been closed. My chair was next to the windows, and this photo was taken before the meeting started.

At another meeting in Las Vegas, the presenter had the room set up well in a classroom arrangement -- rows of tables facing the presenter's podium (and the very large picture windows behind him .... that had a great view of the hotel's swimming pool ). It was hard to pay attention to the presenter when folks in swimwear were strutting along the walkway on the other side of the glass.

A meeting Denver had a similar arrangement, with the audience facing the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows behind the presenter. These windows looked out onto tennis courts. Again, closing the curtains would have kept the audiences heads from swaying from side-to-side as they followed the yellow fuzzy balls being swatted back and forth behind the presenter.

Really, make sure you don't have a meeting Room with a View. If you can't close the curtains, or have foldable walls blocking the windows (and doors), face the audience away from the windows and doors so you can keep their attention.

Round 4: DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?

Sometimes it's hard to hear what's going on at a meeting, let alone the presenter.

Acoustics

The acoustics in some meeting rooms resemble that of a great cavern. And the public address (PA) systems make them sound even worse. It's hard to listen to the message of a presentation when it's echoing and reverberating throughout the cave (is it waking up the bats?).

Public Address System

What is worse is when the PA system doesn't work during the presentation. This is why a presenter should check and double check the PA system well before the meeting is to start. You can't afford to get up there in front of the room and then realize that you're getting a lot of squelch and feedback. Or, you're not getting any sound coming out at all.

Silverware, Dinnerware, and Kitchen Clamor

Some conferences continue their training sessions and seminars through lunch and dinner.

The tables will most likely be these huge circular things with all the chairs arranged around them with not much space between for anyone to walk among them, let alone the serving staff who must navigate through them to deliver the plates laden with food. And it gets even more clamorous when they come through the room DURING the presentation with carts on squeaky and rattling wheels and they proceed to unload the clanking plates and silverware, or when the back doors to the presentation area lead directly to the kitchen where you can hear the kitchen staff yelling at each other and otherwise having conversations or banging on pots and pans.

It may be best to have nothing more than a humorous and not too serious or highly detailed presentation during any meal time -- because no-one will be able to take notes (too much stuff on the table and not enough room) or be able to remember what little they manage to hear.

Round 5: MUSICAL CHAIRS!

Some presentations are held with a sort of "auditorium" or "theater" style of seating, in which there are rows and rows of chairs tightly packed with no tables for note-taking or writing, or for placing your note-pad, backpack, briefcase, water or anything else. Attendees are forced to stash all their stuff under their chairs. In fact, sometimes the rows are crammed together so closely that if you have to walk into the row to find a chair, you wind up stepping on people's shoes (thus the musical shrieking from those you step on). Or, you might inadvertently get your fingers caught between chairs when they are being shuffled, and again, you'll howl when they get pinched -- very musical.

Here's an example of a very crowded and tightly packed conference hall. No tables. Stuff stuck under seats. Minimal room between rows for getting to seats. For presentations longer than an hour, this seating arrangement can be extremely uncomfortable. If possible, avoid this kind of presentation room arrangement -- try at least to have tables at the front of each row, and provide room for attendees to walk between the rows and be able to back their chairs away from the tables for easy access.

Round 6: DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?

If you are doing a presentation that involves material that you'd like attendees to retain, what you project on a large screen (whether "view graphs" or PowerPoint "slides" or views from a live computer screen) can help with getting your point across.

However, there are techniques for these visual aspects of presentations that you should try to follow if at all possible.

You've heard of the phrase "Death by PowerPoint"? This phenomenon happens mostly with presenters who are more in love with the bells-and-whistles of PowerPoint rather than getting their point across. Yeah, you can pop in animations of the bullet-points flying into the slide from all sorts of different angles. You can add images that move (either as an animated .gif or even as an .mpeg video-clip). You can play with the colors and types of fonts (and backgrounds). But don't go overboard on these!

But be aware of the size limitations of EACH image used for your presentation.

• Don't try to cram the whole presentation into one slide.
• Don't have more than 50 slides. In fact, some say that the most slides you should have for an hour presentation is about 10 to 15.
• Don't have more than 3-4 bullet points per slide. I've seen presenters who tried to cram what looked like 12-point or worse, 10-point font, into full paragraphs (that resembled just a screen-shot of an e-book) onto a slide. Or, they have pasted an Excel spreadsheet that's 10 columns wide and 30 rows deep on a PowerPoint slide. It's hard enough to read from the front of the room. The folks at the back of the room might have to pull out a pair of binoculars or a telescope to see what the heck you've got on the slide.
• Don't read directly from the slide (especially if you've got the full text of your presentation on each slide). This won't be much of a problem if you have only 3-4 bullets per slide, but even then, the bullets should be short statements and not full paragraphs.
• Don't get fancy with all the bells and whistles. Your point is to make your point. Don't distract from your presentation with all the fancy stuff.
• If you are going to show real-screen views of applications like graphical user interface or spreadsheets, or command line interface code, be aware that in a larger room or in a room with more than 20 people many will have problems with seeing and understanding what's going on with the big screen. (Sometimes the text labels on a live screen are hard to read [because they have small fonts] even from the original screen application view.)

This photo was taken during a small workshop "boot-camp" on DITA-XML I attended. We were lucky in that we were in a relatively small conference room, with tables facing a single large screen at the front of the room. The image projected directly from a laptop computer screen showed the actual working software interface. For larger groups, this would not be good, because it would be too hard to see what was displaying on the screen.

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Dave Gardner, of Pacific Consultants Group, is a documentation professional with extensive experience in analyzing, scoping, planning, scheduling, budgeting, researching, organizing, writing, editing, and producing scientific, technical, and regulatory compliance publications. He is available for quick-turn-around and long-term documentation projects. For more information on how he can help you with your documentation needs, contact him through LinkedIn messaging.