Where and When

Where are you presenting?

When are you presenting

I know you’ve got to be wondering why the time and location of your session matters. I assure you it does.

The “Where” and “When” of your presentation is all about the venue and environment that you will be delivering your presentation in. Consider the differences between these presentation opportunities:

• After work Meetup at private room in local craft brewery
• Board room in the office just after lunch
• First keynote of the day at a conference
• At your booth space in an exhibit hall

Each of these situations will impact how you deliver your presentation and how your audience will receive it.

For example, after lunch at the office, you need to deliver on professionalism while keeping your attendees awake. After work, a presentation could be much more casual and fun. The situation matters.

You will also want to adjust about your presentation in consideration of the audio and visual support that you will ave available. It is always worth having a conversation with your hosts about what resources are available to you during your presentation. For instance, I frequently host guest speakers for online webinar presentations but if they do not mention a video with sound ahead of time, the audience is going to get a whole lot of video with no audio due to technology constraints.

I know you’ve seen the presenter who has to attempt to capture computer audio with their lapel microphone since computers are often hooked up for the projector but not sound.

The same goes for internet access. Are you delivering your presentation from a web-based source such as Google slides or Prezi? Are you planning a live demo?

We’ll talk more about live demonstrations and microphones later, but the moral of this story is to know your Where and When.

Now, go ahead and write it down…

Where and When are you presenting?