View the Program As a Learning Opportunity for All
Now that we understand the importance of continual learning, there are great benefits to approaching a talk as an opportunity for everyone to learn – including the speakers. Although you are undoubtedly an expert in your field, we have found that, as a speaker, you can benefit by designing your talk or panel as a process in which you and your audience interact. Some suggested ideas for doing this are outlined below.
Keep Prepared Remarks Brief
The place to begin is to keep every speech to bare minimum, no more than 10 minutes and possibly less. The fact is that people simply can’t absorb more than 5-7 points, so most of the content of an ordinary 20-30 minute talk is lost and actually leaves the audience overloaded. The key is to focus your remarks very sharply on only a few crucial themes.
Use Handouts to Provide Details
After focusing on a few key points in a 5-10 minute talk, you can then offer details in a short article, outline, or other handouts. This is especially useful if the handout is distributed before the talk so people can think about it and be more receptive to hearing your live comments.
Provide Opportunities for Structured Interaction
Questions and answers are fine, but it tends to be unsatisfying because only dominant people speak up and it often leads nowhere. A far better idea is to provide some structured process for gathering information systematically. Small group discussions can work beautifully, especially if they report the results to form a synthesized whole. A simple poll, by show of hands or tabulating a quick survey, can also be very effective.
Avoid Sales-Oriented Presentations
Please understand that it is the policy of the World Future Society to aggressively discourage the inclusion of any sales-oriented presentations at its conferences and workshops. Presentations that include statements designed to "sell" specific methods and services of companies, that claim superiority over competitors, or that are misleading can do serious harm to maintaining the integrity of WFS’s polices and purposes. Presentations containing sales efforts also are often poorly received by many attendees, which can work to the detriment of the presenter and the presenter’s company. WFS does, however, allow commercial literature on our free-take-one displays, book displays, and tabletop exhibits. If you wish to take advantage of this, we request that you contact Society headquarters for pricing and location information.
Helpful suggestions for enhancing conference sessions.
The following recommendations were collected from conference evaluation forms. These comments are intended to improve the overall conference experience for both the attendees and the speakers.
• Provide handouts of presentations. Handouts and any visual aids should be simple, clear and readable.
• Adhere to the schedule (begin and end on time).
• Panelists should be cognizant of their time and considerate of other panel members. Each member should have equal time.
• Be prepared and professional in your speaking manner.
• Be energetic, direct and to the point.