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How many conferences have you attended? I suspect the answer is “too many to count.” Your firm has probably sponsored some of them.
Let’s see if I can guess at the format. It’s built around a roster of speakers, who specialize in various topics. Each one talks for 45 minutes to an hour. Participants go from room to room, to hear subjects of interest to them.
Sound familiar?
Here’s the bad news. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s time to re-think how conferences are conducted.
Speakers love it
The format works great for speakers. I should know. We’re well paid to give presentations. It’s something we’ve trained to do. There no shortage of advice intended to help us shine, with titles like: How to Give a Great Presentation.
We love giving presentations. Who wouldn’t? We’re the center of attention. We have the opportunity to demonstrate our expertise and our presentation skills. We’re fully engaged and totally energized.
Unfortunately, the audience isn’t. That’s the problem.
A short attention span
I previously wrote an article about the short attention span of audiences. I noted studies that show that audiences daydream and even fall asleep during presentations.
Other studies (referenced here) found that an audience will “mentally check out of your next PowerPoint presentation after about 10 minutes.”
Think about that data. It undermines the entire premise of holding conferences, which is to convey information that will be heard, understood and implemented.
It gets worse.
Poor listening
An extract from The Plateau Effect, by Bob Sullivan and Hugh Thompson, published in Scientific American, reached this stunning conclusion: “The truth is, the older people get, the more their listening comprehension sinks. Making matters worse, studies show that people wildly overestimate how good they are at listening.”
The authors referenced a number of studies to support this observation, but this one is all you need to know: Participants were asked to sit through a 10-minute oral presentation. They were then asked to summarize its content. The study found that half of the participants failed to do so even moments after the talk. Two days after the test, 75% of them couldn’t even recall the subject matter.
I can only imagine the results if the oral presentation was extended from 10 minutes to an hour.
