Public Speaking Trainer
‘In a world that is constantly changing, there is no one subject or set of subjects that will serve you for the foreseeable future, let alone for the rest of your life. The most important skill to acquire now is learning how to learn’ – John Naisbitt.
dineshrie pillay CA(SA) Business Owner and Public Speaking Trainer
You walk onto a stage and a holographic version of you introduces you to the audience. You clap your hands and your presentation slide comes alive in a 3D version around the room. You begin your presentation with a swipe of your hand to the right, all through motion detection …
If the above sounds a bit crazy, it is not. All the technology for presenting like this exists in some form or the other today. It is just a matter of time before these tools are consolidated for the speaking industry.
Trends in future presentations
Holograms, the use of virtual reality and augmented reality are going to play a role in your future presentations. Instead of asking the audience to ‘picture a scene’, you can ask them to put on their ‘goggles’ to view a simulated version of your description.
Product demonstrations become more mainstream. This is where you can use your mobile device and stream your screen onto a projector to show the audience in real time what you want them to do.
Slides become more immersive and creative. Think 3D slides with 3D graphics. There are already websites that enable you to create beautiful slides with animations, graphics and cinema graphics. The sites listed below are just some of the many options to consider to create impactful slides:
- Powtoon.com
- Presentermedia.com
- Beautiful.ai
- Visme.co
- Infodiagram.com
If you want to take slide creation even further, think of engaging HTML5 presentations. Sites that can assist you with this include Focusky and Reveal.js.
Engage your audience with colour, typography and an unusual font that is matched with bold pictures. Interact with your audience through polls – based on their response via a link on their mobile device, the graph with their response is populated onto the projector screen. Conduct live quizzes with your audience that becomes a discussion point with your audience dependent on their feedback from that quiz.
Storytelling becomes more personal and non-linear. Storytelling is no longer a history lesson but an experience that your audience lives in the way that you share the story through dialogue, character enactment, and the use of body language, gestures and voice imitation.
How to prepare for the new presentation style
- Be curious Use the time of lockdown to reflect on your current style of presentation. Explore some of the sites suggested in this article to create your next presentation. Get comfortable with exploring the use of colour, graphics, 3D animation, slide templates and photos to create engaging content.
- Be confident Your message to the audience is still the most critical part of the presentation. Construct your presentation with the overall objective for the audience and then consider how to use some of the existing technology to engage, interact and entertain the audience.
- Be catalytic The sooner you can start to challenge yourself and what you think you are capable of achieving, the sooner you will be able to adapt to the new way of presenting and use of technology.
- Be collaborative Learn from other people who have adopted technology to enhance their presentations.
- Be credible You are still the presenter and your message is still your ultimate power to impact people. Everything else is a tool to help you deliver your message.
