Learn how to engage your audience
By Silvana Clark
At a parks and recreation conference, I watched a speaker begin his presentation by saying, “Soooooo, I want to tell you a story.” He then went on to relate how his daughter had all the latest toys, games, and age-appropriate video games. He described many of these in detail. His story was punctuated with unnecessary details about the hair color of his daughter’s five Barbie dolls. He continued, explaining how his daughter frequently complained of being bored. At this point, his story was eight minutes into a 45-minute keynote. I watched people start to squirm and lose interest. Three minutes later, he came to his conclusion. He described how his daughter went outside, lay on the grass and enjoyed looking at all the shapes in the clouds. His point? Kids should spend time outdoors. It’s a nice story. A nice story if it was condensed to two or three minutes.
