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TIME
Scheduling an
event
If you are scheduling your own event, it’s generally a good idea to avoid
peak holiday times (in most countries that’s August, when, for example,
the whole of France goes on vacation), public holidays and rush hours.
If your event is in the personal development area, weekends usually work
best: choose Saturday for a one-day event; Friday and Saturday for a two-
day event (so that people can decompress and absorb on the Sunday
before going back to work); or Friday, Saturday and Sunday for a three-
day event.
If you’re aiming at the business market, then Friday from 10 am to 4 pm
works very well: people love getting home for an early weekend. In order,
the next best days are Wednesday, Thursday and Tuesday. Monday is a
bad choice because people get back to work after the weekend and
become very conscious of their task list; if you choose Monday you are
likely to get many last-minute cancellations. Breakfasts can also work
very well for shorter business-oriented events.
Timing your
content
If you are the event organiser, you have some flexibility here. Whether
you are speaking for 20 minutes or 8 hours, what’s vital is to agree to the
timing with the audience, making a contract with them. In my seminars
and workshops, I lay out the schedule and ask all the participants if they
agree to be present for the whole thing – and if anyone has to leave
punctually at the end for transport or other reasons, just in case anything
delays the proceedings and we have to overrun.
If you are not the organiser, it is critical to be clear beforehand about
timings, and to stick to them.
For business presentations, I always agree to meeting start AND finish
times. It is amazing how many people think that meetings need only a
start time! Having agreed to the start and length, I can then ask at the
beginning if everyone is ok for the whole meeting. Sometimes people
must leave early, in which case you know in time to edit your content
accordingly. For example, if a key decision-maker can stay for only 15
minutes, you can agree with everyone at the start that you’ll do a short
summary of the whole thing in 10 minutes and leave 5 minutes for
discussion, then go into the details after the person has left the meeting.
Being accurate in your timing requires that you know how long your
material takes to deliver, and that you have a structure with waypoints
against which you can check your progress. The first of these requires
rehearsal, of which more in a little while. Not-knowing your talk’s length
because you haven’t bothered to practice is a major error; in my opinion,
it is also downright rude. This is a pitfall that can come from pride, or at
least overconfidence. I remember once at TED seeing a CEO who was a
highly practiced public speaker be rather humiliated. He had been given a
six-minute slot and rather arrogantly chose to busk it. He either failed to
look at the clock or assumed that TED would turn a blind eye if he
overran (which they almost never do!) so by the end of his 6 minutes he
had barely started to deliver his point. At that point, he was asked to
summarise the rest of his talk in one-minute and move off so the next
person could speak. He was quite flustered; it was a little like seeing a
balloon deflate. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen
people at multi-speaker events play fast and loose with their scheduled
time, and sadly many organisers are not as tight as TED about it. The
record for late running in my experience was a marketing conference in
Istanbul, which was an hour behind schedule after just 2 speakers! You
can’t control the organisers or the other speakers, so your job is simply to
be on time yourself whenever it finally gets to be your turn.
Structure and waypoints can be managed in 2 ways. For most talks, you
can use a countdown clock. I have one on my Mac in keynote’s Presenter
View; PowerPoint offers the same function, as do most presentation
packages. TED has long used a countdown clock at the speaker’s feet,
ticking down from the talk’s agreed length to zero. Many organisers now
emulate this practice with a screen on stage that counts down, or
something similar (at one venue I remember there was someone in the
front row holding an iPad with a countdown clock on it!). You can work
perfectly well off a clock long as you have a rough idea of your key
waypoints: by minute 6 I must have completed this much, and so on.
More complex tracking for longer content like a seminar requires
something I call a
syntax
, defined as ‘a connected or orderly system: a
harmonious arrangement of parts or elements’. This breaks long content
into bite-sized chunks, each timed and practiced, so that you can plan
accurately. To create a syntax, I use a simple spreadsheet with 5 columns.
The first describes the chunk of content; the second the duration of that
chunk in minutes; the third the start time (copy the end time of the
previous chunk); the fourth the end time (using a formula to add the
duration to the start time); the fifth any notes required, for example
describing props or exercises. My one-day seminars break down into 4
90-minute units with breaks in between, so each unit has its own syntax
spreadsheet where the total duration must be 90 minutes. Designing
content at this level of rigour and detail is tremendous for ensuring that
you deliver completely and efficiently. You can keep a printed copy of the
syntax in front of you as you speak; or you can build the cumulative
timings into your slide package or your index cards; or you can have
someone work with you to signal how you are tracking against the
schedule (more on this in the section on Team that’s coming next).
TEAM
For anything more than a small presentation, there is usually a need for a
team. If you’re speaking at someone else’s event, this will be organised for
you, and your job is simply to be pleasant, clear, professional and
appreciative. You never know when you will meet people again, so it’s not
only good manners but also good business to leave them feeling positive
about their experience of working with you.
I always make a special point of saying hello to the AV person or crew,
because they can make or break my talks, given the amount of sound that
I use. I chat them through any issues or possible hiccups so that they are
fully briefed and happy to help: for example, if I am starting with a black
slide it’s vital to tell them – without knowing that, they would switch to
my presentation and probably panic when they see nothing on screen.
For large events, there is usually a producer or stage manager; there may
be a host or MC; there may even be make-up and hair (the latter being
not so vital in my case!). Treat them all well, and they will usually return
the favour by giving you their best effort.
If you are running your own event, you will decide on your team. You may
need one or more meeter/greeters, particularly if you are asking people to
fill in any paperwork when they arrive, or giving them name badges. You
may want to have a ‘room captain’ – someone who oversees the ‘Zen’ of
the room, making sure that everything is just so, and is reset completely
in every break.
That same person may be able to be your second, sitting at the back of the
room and thus able to signal to you privately over the heads of the
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