When it's done right

It's the nature of my work that I attend a lot of presentations. Unfortunately, a lot of them are awful. Last week, I was pleasantly surprised.

I was invited to a presentation of the House of Wine (www.houseofwine.cz) at the Royal Oak (www.royaloakprague.com). There were about twenty of us in the audience and our presenter was Elsie Pells. Elsie immediately caught our attention with a video introducing us to the wines of South Africa. The video was short, but it got our attention and made us want to learn more.

After the video, Elsie gave a talk in more depth about what makes her wine special and we had a chance to taste each variety as she went along. Not all of us have the advantage of having our audience taste wine and eat cheese while they are listening to us, but I can think of a hundred ways that even this could have been made boring. Elsie avoided every one of them.

How did she do it? One word - enthusiasm! She was wildly enthusiastic about her product and she managed to infuse us with the same amount of enthusiasm throughout her talk. Her presentation lasted close to two hours, but not once did I or anyone else notice how long it was.

This was not the only thing she did right. Her audience was clearly the focus of her talk and she continually asked us questions and kept our attention by weaving interesting stories into her presentation. The effect was phenomenal.

It has been a long time since I enjoyed a presentation so much and it has restored my faith in the possibility that it can still be done right. I left the presentation with a renewed energy to help people do what Elsie did. Bravo!

© 2009 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved