Last night we hosted a talk by Kris and Suki at the Energized Work lab. The talk was called 230 Iteration Later and it was a dry run for the QCon conference in London this month.
Suki and Kris arrived at the lab a wee bit frazzled. They warned everyone their talk wasn’t actually finished; they had an end-to-end story but it was a bit rough around the edges, lacking detail in places, and they hadn’t rehearsed.
It can be painful listening to an early version of a presentation (although this one was enjoyable), but what got me was the questions, feedback, ideas and discussions afterwards, which lasted longer than the 60-minute talk. It looked like people in the audience were interested in the story they’d heard and, in response, provided thoughtful and helpful feedback.
I can imagine if it was me presenting, I’d love to have that quality feedback so I could do a better job in completing and polishing the structure, content and narrative of my talk. It seems entirely sensible in terms of both investment and validation to take a presentation to, say 70% done, and then run through it for real in front of some people to get their feedback. And then use that feedback and experience to adjust the deck, tune the delivery, and improve the overall session experience for the real audience ahead.
Steve had the idea of offering this as a forum to anyone who’s in the process of preparing a session for a conference.
So, if you’d like to give your 70%-done presentation a run in front of an early audience of 10 or 12 of your colleagues plus friends of Energized Work and crew, and get some useful feedback please let us know and we’ll be happy to host a forum. The lab comes fully equipped with the finest German beers.
Please email thelab at energizedwork dot com.
