If you are cooking for your 7-year old son’s birthday party or dinner for your boss and his wife, are you likely to prepare the same dishes? The same sorts of considerations that go into planning a meal for these different groups also apply to meeting planning and trainings. The point is, don’t underestimate the importance of knowing your audience.

When you are preparing a training or presentation, consider the age, skill level, and backgrounds of your audience. How much do they already know about your topic? How will this new information be of use to them? Is the terminology going to be over their heads? What do the participants have in common with each other? Learning the answers to questions like these in advance will help you develop curriculum that meets the needs of your particular audience.

Recently, an acquaintance who frequently presents to groups of public school teachers lamented how tough an audience of teachers can be. As a former high school teacher, I knew exactly what she was talking about. Whether it was a faculty meeting or professional development workshop, the presenters competed for our attention with the looming pressures of papers to grade, lessons to create, parents to contact, etc.  Knowing this about the audience makes it all the more important to communicate immediately how your information or training will be of value to them.

If you’re interested in tips for how to get your audience’s attention, you might want to check out this article:

Creative Presentation Openers

Or if you know your audience may be hostile, here’s an article with strategies for defusing the tension and managing attendee experience:

Defusing a Hostile Audience

Whether you work in sales, training, product design, or another functional area, you’ve probably led or participated in webinars or web conferences. The webinar is a widely used method for communication and training these days. Although everyone’s using web conferencing technology and meetings are easy to setup, we mustn’t forget that it’s a real event. As a meeting or event planner, you’re probably concerned about managing your attendee experience. It’s worth it to do some planning and preparation in advance. Here are a handful of best practices I recommend:

·        Login 10 -15 minutes early to set things up and start on time

·        Ask participants to login 5 minutes early for similar reasons

·        Recommend participants mute their phone lines unless they have questions

·        Provide an agenda and/or key objectives to focus participants

·        Use presentation materials that are clear and concise

·        Pace your speech and content delivery

·        Avoid fast or unnecessary mouse scrolling

·        Check-in periodically with participants to see if they have questions

·        Pose questions to participants to encourage active participation

·        If possible, have a partner with you that can attend to any technical problems

These are just a few quick tips for delivering successful webinars. Here are a couple of more detailed resources you might want to check out:

Ken Molay's Blog on Webinars

National Service Resources : webinar how-to guide