event planning
Make the first PowerPoint slide about your attendees and/or their company. For example, a photo of a company building ...
- Make the first PowerPoint slide about your attendees and/or their company. For example, a photo of a company building and/or some of your attendees works well. As the adage goes, “People’s favorite subject is themselves.”
- Make a slide with a joke that pokes fun at your company’s competitor.
- Use photos that elicit emotions and/or sensory perceptions (e.g. pictures of facial expressions or delicious food).
- Ask questions very often to engage the audience. Consider which of your existing slides (if any) can be reframed as questions.
- Give out a Lyndt chocolate truffle whenever a correct answer is called out, but have enough of them to give remaining chocolates to everyone at the end. That way, nobody leaves the presentation feeling like an empty-handed loser.
- Call two (or more) attendees up and have them act out roles you assign them. This can play out really funny. For example, in a sales meeting, you might have one participant pretend to be salesperson as another participant pretends to be the prospect.
- Ask questions that start with “by a show of hands….” (You’re more likely to get participation from more attendees that way, than if you try to get a verbal answer from everyone.)
- If possible, take multiple breaks and do something purely recreational during those breaks. These breaks can reset attention spans a bit.
- Use a laser pointer to avoid your attendees looking in the wrong places and getting lost.
- Pass out handouts where attendees write something down (e.g. polling, raffle with slips of paper, etc.).
- Use “hide and reveal” games to add suspense. For example, you can have a main image covered up by a second image over top of it. The second image can gradually disappear as everyone guesses at what the main image will be.
- If you need a practice round before your meeting, find a local Toastmasters club and ask if they have a projector. If they do, ask if you can do a guest speech. (They might require you join but the membership fees are are negligible in the context of an important presentation.)
- If your PowerPoint presentation is very important and you feel overwhelmed by it, don’t assume you have to do it alone. You can try to hire the corporate entertainer who wrote this article to partner with you. Imagine if everything listed above is applied to your presentation, but corporate magic and mind reading were also used to illustrate your points in the presentation. Check out the video below to see it in action.