Twitter-heckled Key Note Speaker – Know your Audience!

Heather Buckley — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:19:06 +0000

Two days ago a Keynote speaker at the Social Media Conference “HighEdWeb 2009: Open. Connected” Showed how dangerous it can be to give a presentation without knowing your audience. Apparently he is not on Twitter and was talking about the effectiveness of Snail Mail Campaigns, and using not very good and outdated PowerPoint Slides. The organisation hosting the event seem social media savvy enough and encouraged attendees to use the tag #heweb09 to follow the back channel discussion.

(See our range of Social Media Training courses to learn more – including a new leading edge SEO training course)

Oh dear – The Social Media conversant audience soon started to tweet about the speakers outdated comments . The audience being well connected caused an avalanche effect as tweets and re-tweets flooded twitter escalating it to the trending topic of the day!

Tweets this presenter could learn from :

Gold font on gray background w/ 1990 drop shadow makes babies cry. Should we stage intervention
“Videos are not automatically good”
hella drop shadow
Someone turn up the contrast
Ugly slide and I can’t hear u
too much background music
OH: it’s always relevant when you use popular hip hop songs from 5 years ago
We’ve had two keynotes, neither of whom build websites…
KAZAA OMG. how old is this video? Kazaa has been dead for years
im currently reminded of towelie from south park, I have no idea whats going on right now
blah blah blah out of business blah blah blah here watch a video
Can anyone hear this guy? Or read his slides?
conspiracy theory about the keynote: it’s a test of the power of the back channel; social experiment
We’ve moved to 10 years ago now…
I think the sound guy has fallen asleep
talking quite, music loud, are they trying to get to go have a quick nap before the 1:30 presos??
Anyone else confused by that video?
I think I’m about to have a seizure
ok. slides with paragraphs of information make me turn around, and tweet about how such things are bad
Watching keynote. Clearly I’m not the only one that sucks at Powerpoint. I was smart enough to not use it though.
Why is this guy here?
18things flashing and beeping. That’s why we need movement on the homepage . Right
Someone needs a class on PowerPoint… Sound levels in videos … And being relevant to your audience.
You know a presentation is relevant when it mentions Xanga.
watching people try to figure out how they can get out, starting to see the OMG I AM TRAPPED looks on faces
Did we go back in time 4 years? Knew all this already. Something new please!!
Worst designed powerpoint ever. Ever.
Oh he wants frequent and immediate feedback. Anyone?
ha ha this reminds me that myspace is the trailer park of social media. ha ha

Presenters beware – twittering will be around for some time, if you have a large audience be sure you know them well and give them what they want. Even if you know all this and are a great presenter following your audience reaction on twitter can only be a good thing, feedback is a good thing and now it is happening real time.

Those interested in building up their online presence using Social Media may be interested in our one day Social Media Training course. Silicon Beach Training offer Presentation Training, and an Advanced Presentation Skills Course. We also have a Presentation Skills Free Resources section.

Silicon Beach Training Blog » back channel

Twitter-heckled Key Note Speaker – Know your Audience!