The Lost Opportunities of Michael Jurek & Microsoft

If you read my previous post, you know that, with one exception, the Internet Developers Forum was a disappointment regarding the quality of presentations there. Michael Jurek was the keynote speaker and represented the main sponsor of the event, Microsoft. I have no doubt that Michael is an expert in his field, but these days that just isn't enough for people to pay attention or even to stay in the room, as you will see.

Here are three mistakes that I think Michael made:

No interaction

Michael chose not to use the projector remote so he positioned himself to the far left of the stage close to his computer so he could advance his slides. Subsequently, his attention was either focused on his computer or on the screen the whole time. He NEVER looked at the audience!

The audience was not part of this presentation. He never asked us questions or looked to see if we understood what he was talking about. After about thirty minutes, people started to get up and leave the room. I stopped counting after awhile. At the end of his presentation, about half the audience had left. And this was the FIRST presentation of the conference! The keynote should be the presentation that gets people excited about the rest of the day. Instead, it was the presentation that set the tone of boring, slide-focused talks that filled the rest of our time.

Slides

Michael chose to fill his slide deck with bullet point slides full of text. Even in technical presentations, this really isn't necessary. I understand that there is some information in this kind of presentation that needs to be put on a slide, but there are so many other ways to do this! There is no excuse for filling a slide with words and forcing your audience to either read or listen to you. Invariably, they will choose not to listen because it's the easier option. So, that makes the speaker obsolete and it would be better to just send us the slides because all of the information is already on them.

No passion

Michael's topic was about Cloud Computing - the theme of the entire conference. Michael showed absolutely no enthusiasm for this topic. It seemed that his attitude was 'I will put out all of this information and if people are interested, they'll want to know more. If they aren't, I don't really care'. Maybe that wasn't really his attitude, but that was certainly the impression that Michael gave during his presentation.

I don't think that speakers need to entertain us - that's not what I'm talking about. There are just some very basic questions that they need to ask themselves when they prepare. These questions will give the impression that the speaker cares.

Why are you excited about Azure? Why should the audience care about it? What does the audience already know about it? What problem is it solving? How is it different and better than the competition? What is your ultimate goal for this presentation? What do you want your audience to do with this information? Next time, I would advise Michael to think about these questions when he's preparing his presentation. Answering them will make a big difference to his impact.


I asked Michael what he thought about his presentation after he finished. He said that he knew he made a lot of mistakes because he had already had presentation training. I asked him if he knew that half the audience left during his presentation. He said that he was aware of it, but it was just the people that hate Microsoft that left. But, Michael, they were there at the beginning and maybe they expected to hear something interesting from you!

The bottom line is - Microsoft spent some money to sponsor this conference. What was the return for them? Did they motivate people to look into their products and services? Did they share trends that are happening and move people to care about them? Did they increase their tribe?

Sponsorship is a lot more than just putting a table in the hallway with your products. A big part of it is taking the opportunity of making an outstanding keynote presentation and making it translate into increased business. Unfortunately, this didn't happen at the Internet Developers Forum. I hope that Michael rethinks how he presents next time and takes advantage of the opportunities.

© 2011 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved