Wired Presentations

Cliff Atkinson has a new book. It hit the street a few days ago. The title is The Backchannel. I have a copy of it and I have had a blast reading it, so when Cliff invited me to a webinar about the book I jumped at the chance to attend.

The backchannel is a subcurrent of discussion, typically using social media applications, that take place while an event is going on. I use the term event but most of the time you hear it in relation to presentations. You can have backchannels for book releases, movies, concerts, sporting events, courses, etc. Heck, Cliff’s book has a backchannel associated with it.

The webinar had a great backchannel and I think that we all learned a lot. One thing that I liked about the webinar was that in addition to the backchannel it had a great “frontchannel” as well. There was verbal discussions among the participants. Make that high-quality verbal discussions among the participants.

I usually listen and take notes when I attend presentations, whether on the Web or live. Plus, I am not afraid to ask a question. What I don’t typically do is tweet, IM, etc. But today was different @DaveGray tweeted that he had setup a backchannel…

That prompted this tweet….

I will take this a little further. It is wrong not to tweet during a presentation about the backchannel. You need to know what it is like as an audience member before –  BEFORE — you present to a backchannel. If you don’t you are begging for trouble.

You are presenting to the backchannel as well as the people sitting in front of you.

There are differing opinions regarding this. The old school view is that the people sitting in front of you paid to be there and you should focus on them. You can see that expressed here.

I believe that there is a lot of validity to this view. Fortunately, I think a creating and delivering a great experience satisfies both groups.

You aren’t just delivering a presentation you are delivering an experience.

You hear about the backchannel and it’s ties to technical conferences but I am pretty sure that if you participate in a backchannel while a speaker is describing, and showing, how you change the DB Control settings in Teradata you are going to miss something. I am not certain how the backchannel will relate to the presentations that I give. I may not ever see it, but you know what? I am not going to take that chance.

Prepare for the backchannel even if you don’t think you will ever face it — it will make your presentations better.

Here is another way of thinking about this…

It’s good that there might actually be a downside to sucking as a presenter — we’ve been tortured too long.

You can check-out the Twitter backchannel of Cliff’s talk (and book) by clicking here –> #backchannelbook.

Thanks for the experience Cliff! I appreciate it.