I'm really conflicted on this topic.
When I first started with my company, 20 years ago, our conferences involved presentations made by
guys who are all now retired or dead, for the most part. They came up in the 60s and 70s and most of
them attended Dale Carnegie courses as part of their corporate grooming (our speakers tend to be the
top tier of the beverage business, the occasional self-made entrepreneur and top-tier Wall Street
analyst, so all of them come into the arena having done public speaking either occasionally or
frequently). They worked from slides (35mm slides!) and usually brought along a videotape of their
companies ads or perhaps something from an internal presentation. One industry giant, based in the
South, had an incredible A/V department and would sometimes bring their own Videodisc presentations
(one can imagine the cost on that in the early 90s). Just about every one of these guys (and they
were almost all guys) would read from a prepared script. Most of them were well-rehearsed and the
script guaranteed that the slides would go off without a hitch. Often there was an underling running
the slides, working from the script, but sometimes guys would keep a "clicker" up on the podium. I
recently had to pull out some audio from one of these early 90's conferences and it struck me how
well some of these guys got their point across, in carefully chosen words that sounded good when
read aloud. It's a lost art!
When laptops got semi-reliable, everyone started switching to Powerpoint. I well remember several
terrible crashes when a laptop (usually a Compaq, for some reason) couldn't output video to the
house projector without freezing. We got to where we insisted that everyone bring their slides on a
CD-ROM and load them into our computer, which we knew worked with the house projector. By around
2000, laptops were reliable enough that we didn't need to do that, although nowadays most people
want to use our laptop so they don't have to carry their own. We don't discourage them because that
means we don't need to chase them down for slides for our transcript CD-ROMs.
The proliferation of PowerPoint led to a proliferation of "talking to the slides," which I do myself
for my presentations. I admit not being as good at it as some others. However, like most other
people, I doubt there will be a day again where we'll take the time to carefully craft concise words
and rehearse reading them well. Talking to the slides can keep things light and spontaneous, but it
can also enhance rambling and disorganized tendancies, to the chagrin of the audience. However,
someone who's clever and well-informed can ramble themselves into a comfortable groove and pop off a
bunch of good stories that might be afield of the slides but are interesting anyway.
So net-net, I'd come down on the side of reading from a really good script. The problem is, good
script-writing is an art and having someone blather on in overly complex language and not looking at
the audience is worse than rambling to the slides. I would say, if you know you're going to be
nervous and your subject matter is dense, try a script. See if you can boil it down to essential
elements in words that sound good together out loud. Then read it, at a good pace, and if you look
at the audience imagine that they are as naked as you feel. The benefit from that is, you'll get
your points across in the alloted time and if you stick to the script (and have rehearsed it
properly for timing), you'll have time for a nice Q&A, which can make everyone feel at ease (unless
some snarky old crank stands up and claims everything you've just said is wrong and that you're a
fool for saying it -- it's happened before at ARSC).
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cary Ginell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2013 2:46 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Tip for ARSC Conference presenters -- reinforcing previous lessons
I don't see that there is a big problem with the reading of a presentation, so long as you do it in
an interesting and compelling fashion. After all, the President of the United States does it all the
time. The key is to not make it sound like you are reading. A radio career is often an excellent
source of experience for reading words in public. Depending on the presenter's experience, I would
not recommend for or against reading from a prepared text. It all depends on what you are good at
and what you are comfortable with. I do both writing and speaking as part of my profession, although
I feel I am a better writer. Thus, I always read from a prepared text that is rigidly timed so I
know exactly where I am at all times. My experience as a radio host enables me to communicate the
text in an interesting fashion, utilizing PowerPoint slides to illustrate. I like to use printed
words on my slides where necessary, but limit the words to only what is absolutely essential.
Sometimes, printing details such as recording dates, locations, or record label info on a slide
saves speaking time. I agree one shouldn't duplicate what is printed on the slides with your spoken
text. It should illuminate what you are saying.
Cary Ginell
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