Presenting: the Critical First Five Minutes

I was just practicing for the upcoming COMS 130 extravaganza, and therefore reflecting on giving presentations, and wanted to share some tips about the all-important first five minutes. A lot of things happen in this time that will cause your audience to either pay rapt attention to you (or at least listen with an open mind) or glaze over and ignore you. You have an amazing degree of control over how things go, if you follow a few key guidelines.

1. Think of Fantasy Island. Remember at the beginning of each show, when Ricardo Montalban says "Smiles, everyone, smiles"? If you walk into a presentation smiling, looking relaxed and engaged and glad to be there, the audience will take your cue. Stop for a minute to take a deep breath, remember that you have valuable information that your audience needs, and act glad to be there.

2. Give them your name. It doesn't matter if they will never see you again after this presentation. If you want them to listen to you for the next hour, tell them who you are. You can also tell them your job title or what you do if it's relevant, or just say that you work at the Libraries. If they know your name, they'll listen to you more closely. Trust me, this works. If you are a real person to them rather than a talking head, you'll be much harder to ignore. You can also introduce others involved in the presentation (such as the person working the computer in the COMS 130 sessions).

3. Thank them in advance. Welcome them and thank them for coming; even if they are required to come, they aren't required to listen. Thanking them sets a nice, polite tone.

4. Use the magical secret key trigger words for audience retention. Okay, there's no one set of magic key trigger words, but you're reading this, aren't you? Trigger words work! You can prime your audience to listen more closely by using trigger words that link to things that are important to them. For example, again from COMS 130:

• grade
• performance
• successful
• instructor's expectations
• easy, simple, faster
• accurate, credible, convincing

This actually works throughout the presentation, but it's great to ramp up audience attention at the beginning. You might say things like, "This session is designed to help you meet your instructor's expectations on your assignment....make it easier to find accurate, credible information for your assignment....find good, reliable information faster.... Your performance depends on the quality of information you find" and so on.

There are also general trigger words like new, important, critical, essential, necessary (and magic, secret, and key, of course!). I often use one of these when I see the energy of the audience starting to flag. "What's critical to remember here, what's really going to affect your performance on this assignment, is...." There. You've got 'em back.

5. Remember, the audience is rooting for you. Once I realized this, my stage fright was greatly reduced. They want this session to be useful and interesting. They are on your side. (This is sometimes hard to remember when it looks like rows and rows of Easter Island statues in baseball caps out there.) If you show them that you are on their side (by smiling, thanking them, and pointing out how the information you're giving them will help them), everything will be fine.