The audience will see right through you.  Have a Conversation - A truly great presentation that engages the audience and is easily and often recalled is one that is a conversation between the presenter and the audience .  You're not speaking AT them, you're speaking WITH them.  If there's one thing I've learned while engulfed in the world of marketing communications the past few years, it's that you are ALWAYS presenting - especially when it comes to business.  Every interaction you have with prospects, customers, vendors, or even just a random passer-by

It's no surprise that we're seeing cases studies coming out of the recent SXSW interactive conference of what to do--and what not to do--when trying to mesh old-school speaking standards with the new Twitter backchannel. Earlier this week, I offered you some lessons from the Twitter CEO's unsuccessful SXSW keynote : Let the audience express itself early, don't sit to be sure you project energy, be interactive with the audience when you represent an interactive technology and plan, plan, plan your content. Today, New York University professor Jay Rosen--who refers to "the people formerly known as the audience" as a signal of audience power--weighs in with a positive case study, How the Backchannel Has Changed the Game for Conference Panelists. If you are organizing, speaking at or just attending a conference, meeting or workshop, I think it's a must-read because it is: A positive and achievable primer on how to put together a panel discussion that A vision of how to merge the audience's needs and those of the speakers , mixing advance information and promotion with in-person followup

Audiences may have short attention spans, but they need some subtelty from you. And that is because we all do have such short attention spans – including our audiences! If we want to make a point that will stay with an audience after they leave the room, we have to repeat and reinforce it throughout the presentation. Ah … a contentious statement, that! What do you think?