As I prepare for a 4-hour social web workshop at OACUHO in Toronto this weekend, I find myself asking this question….
Should I be designing my slides more for the people who are there, or for the people who aren’t there?
Here’s where the thought came from. I was browsing through my old presentations on SlideShare and realized that I’m reaching a much wider audience post-presentation. We’ve all been in this stage of ‘Presentation Zen’ and ‘Slideology‘ for many months as everyone tries to make their slides more simplistic, but are they still able to tell the story to the casual viewer online, and do they still reflect the message enough? In other words, is there enough meat on the bones of your slides to transcend into the online world effectively?
See what I mean?
How to Recruit Students using New Media Outlets - MACAC 2009
Presentation: 40 people
Online: 930 views in 2 weeks
FacebookGate - Online Webinar
Presentation: 2 webinars, 20 people each
Online: 1,085 views in 4 months
Rock Enroll: Integrating Social Media into your Recruitment Strategy - MPSEOC
Presentation: 60 people
Online: 1,636 views in 9 months
The Recruitment Long Tail - Stamats 08 (Slidecast - Audio + Slides to tell the story)
Presentation: 150 people
Online: 1020 views in 6 months
After these presentations happened in real life, they reached an audience on average 15 x’s larger on the web. Surely not all visitors viewed the whole thing, not all of them stayed after the first 5 slides, but they all came across the content. And if was easier to follow, would they stick around longer?
Which leads me to think: How can I create engaging presentation slides that capture the needs of both my live audience and my online audience? The live audience ALWAYS comes first. Bottom line. But would a little more clarification on a slide hurt for when you post it online later? Will it ruin your presentation? If you’re engaging, lively and captivating, does it even matter?
I’ll talk for several minutes this weekend on this slide:

But I wouldn’t expect someone on Slideshare to spend more than several seconds on it. On the other hand, you don’t want your slides to end up on the other extreme:

Just something to think about as you prepare for your next presentation. Be remarkable, be rememberable, and be aware of your post-presentation audience. See you on the stage!




