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Subject:Re: Trip Reports re: presentations From:Janice Gelb <janiceg -at- marvin -dot- eng -dot- sun -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com Date:Mon, 12 Jun 2000 14:35:50 -0700 (PDT)
In article ORG -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com, jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com (John Posada) writes:
>| >
>| The problem with questions held to the end is that (a) sometimes
>| questions
>| are forgotten as more subject matter has been piled on, and (b) the
>| questioners need to take extra time to place the question in context:
>| reviewing the area of the presentation that the question stemmed from.
>
>One of the problems with taking questins as they come is that often, the
>question is answered during a later part of the presentation.
>
If that's going to happen, I usually tell the questioner that
very thing: "Great question - I'll be dealing with that in
another couple of minutes."
>
>The problem I've had (and seen) with taking questions during the
>presenation is that you loose control. How many times have you been in an
>audience and had someone in the audience that thought the presenation was
>only for them and insisted for whatever reason, to "bogart" the speaker's
>time.
>
>Another problem is that yer addressing several issues with the goal of
>coming to a conclusion. Interruption will sidetrack that process and may
>make the conclusion hazy.
>
I can see both sides of this issue but having tried both ways, I prefer
taking questions as they arise. As someone else noted, good questions
may be lost because people forget them before the end. I also think
that you can lose part of the audience when you have a lump of
questioners at the end and they despair of your getting to their
particular issue.
You can still maintain control of the presentation -- if someone is
trying to hog the presentation with their own personal questions, just
say "You seem to have a lot of interest in this topic - how about if we
talk privately after the session is over" or "These questions seem very
specific to your particular company and I'd like to take some more
general questions now."
Ditto keeping the presentation on track: "That's an interesting related
issue but I'd like to get back to my previous point, about ...."
(On the handouts question, I usually bring handouts of my
slides, which have my major points on them but not the
examples or longer explanations of those points, which
is what I cover in the presentation.)
***********************************************************************
Janice Gelb | The only connection Sun has with
janice -dot- gelb -at- marvin -dot- eng -dot- sun -dot- com | this message is the return address. http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8018/index.html
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