The art of torturing audiences

The art of torturing audiences

In the cooler months of the year a number of meetings, seminars and workshops are held in the city. Subjects ranging from Architecture to Zoology, from spiritual to spirits, from mundane to magnificent are all discussed in conference rooms and meeting halls by the erudite citizens of our learned city and by visitors from afar. Engineers, doctors, lawyers, managers, accountants, scientists, all meet to share their thoughts and expound their views. Some of these meetings are in closed group of invitees or paid seminars while others are open to public. Some seminars are held in the best hotels of Vizag while others are held in moderately priced venues.

Different folks, different reasons

Many Vizagites love to attend such events and they do so for different reasons. Some attend to garner knowledge and become wiser. Others, generally elderly men attend so that they may take a nap in the back seat of an air-conditioned hall. It is said that some speakers are better than others in inducing deep stupor in the audience. Some folks attend because it is good time pass and the refreshments being served makes it worthwhile. For some the giveaways, bags, pens and writing pads are an attraction. Others attend such events to socialize and be seen. There are a group of serial seminar attenders who like to ambush the mike during question time and expound their views in the guise of a question. Sometimes the preamble to the question is longer than the speech itself. It requires a determined volunteer to separate the microphone from their hands without bloodshed.

Be prepared for challenges

Whatever may be the reason for attending such events, one must be prepared for some challenges. Even seasoned meeting attenders have a tough time sitting through some speeches. One must be very cautious when the word “eminent” is used to describe a speaker. As a rule the more eminent the speaker the longer and more monotonous will be the speech he or she delivers. I have much regard for our academic friends but have noticed that speakers with prefixes such as Prof. and Dr. before their name and a long list of qualifications following their name are most likely to inflict the most pain on their audience. Then there are some who are asked to introduce a guest speaker but go on and on interminably leaving no points for the poor guest speaker to talk about.

Presentation pain

When it comes to presentations, the use of a laptop with PowerPoint and a multimedia projector is the rule now days. The speaker stands at the podium or sits at a table glancing at his laptop screen system while the audience watches the presentation projected on the larger screen alongside or behind the speaker. Occasionally the presenter turns and point out a detail on the audience’s screen using a laser pointer. The use of PowerPoint is a great boon for presenters and is meant to deliver a visually rich and lucid experience to the audience. Unfortunately now days, most presentations are done by sticking a pen drive with the presentation into a common laptop operated by a “technician” sitting in the dark. The speaker is forced to turn around see the screen while speaking and the slides are advanced by the saying those magic instructions  “next… next … next … no back … back … stop … no go back… stop… stop!”. One wonders why the speaker explaining a highly technical subject like India’s mars mission cannot use a simple cordless presenter (which comes with a laser pointer) to advance the slides.

The tyranny of knowledge

Some very learned speakers cram every slide with several paragraphs of text scanned from their book or lifted from the internet. All that the audience can see on screen without binoculars is rows of little letters. The scholarly speaker reads the whole content of the slide squinting at the screen and the audience is too polite to ask why they were not simply given a photocopy of the book along with the pen and folder and sent home. Several speakers start with the apology for a lousy talk by saying “excuse me, I was told only yesterday and did not have enough time to prepare”. Then they proceed to show us a presentation made in 2005. There are some speakers who know so much of the subject that they want to download the entire material on the hapless audience. They go on and on mumbling to themselves endlessly and not bothered a bit about the audience. It is like getting stoned to death with popcorn. One of the ways of dealing with onerous sonorous speaker is for everyone in the audience to yawn simultaneously, look at their watch and roll their eyes in exasperation. Something like a Mexican wave we see in the football matches. We can call this the “speech stopper wave”.

Just two minutes more please

Every speaker gets his moment but stretches it into an hour! In some technical seminars and workshops several people are invited to speak one after another. Each speaker is given a certain amount of time, for example 10 minutes. A “Sessions Chair” is the person who is responsible for keeping the “session speakers” within his or her time limit and the entire session on schedule. Every learned speaker has a natural affinity to prepare material three times longer than the time allotted and completely impressed by his/her own voice, speaks endlessly forgetting the time limit. The “session’s chair” is intimidated by the qualifications of the speaker, and tries feebly to stop the talk after the allotted time is up.  But the eminent speaker who is in full flow long past his time limit dismisses the warning with a fierce glare and the hapless audience is resigned to a long boring session with no escape. Senior session chairs are tough; they tell the speaker in an authoritative tone that their time is up. Then speaker who has prepared tons of stuff goes into a pleading mode … “just two minutes more sir” he begs knowing fully well that he won’t finish for the next hour.  Eventually he is evicted from the dais and the grateful audience claps wildly in appreciation … of the chair.

Let’s learn to communicate

Vizag is lucky to have several experts in academics, commerce and industry but are woefully short of good communicators. We have aspirations to be a smart knowledge based city. We are at the cusp of a great leap forward in transforming Vizag. However it is important that knowledge and ideas are spread widely so that it permeates the psyche of every Vizagite. It is the appropriate time for those possessing expertise in any field to transfer their knowledge to society at large. This can be done by greatly enhancing our communication skills whether we are giving a speech or making a presentation or talking at a party we must learn to deliver our ideas in a lucid and precise manner. Perhaps we need to make a presentation on how to make presentations. Next … next ... next …stop!