That Concludes My Opening Remarks and Also My Entire Presentation

For many of us, the ideal presentation before a business, social, or civic audience would go a little something like this:

Slide 1 – Title

Slide 2 – Questions?

This approach shows a respect for the audience members’ time, and preserves your own energies for the demands of the rest of the day.

Brevity is always appreciated at a speaking occasion, and I don’t see how a presentation could get much briefer than this.

Success with this method depends a lot on where you land on the agenda. It is best in these circumstances to be either the first speaker to the podium or the last.

In the former case, you are aided mightily by the fact that first thing in the morning no one is paying the slightest bit of attention to you anyway.

Instead at that time of the day the matters at hand, in order of out-and-out God help us pricelessness, go just about like this:

1.       Coffee

2.       More coffee

3.       Danish

4.       Wiping the sleep out of your eyes

5.       Seeing if the socks you put on in the dark of your hotel room match

6.       Coffee

7.       Another Danish

8.       Giving some time to the interesting question of whether you are at the right conference at all

9.       Looking for a program to see what the purpose of this gathering is

10.   More coffee

11.   Crashing your way to the one remaining seat near the front of the room

Savvy meeting-goers may quibble on the exact order of these items, but each must be included to even say that you have attended a conference at all.

Now, put yourself in the place of this savvy meeting-goer and consider what his feelings are when, having finally gathered himself, he looks to the front of the room and sees your lone figure standing next to a screen on which is projected this single line:

Questions?

I will tell you what his feelings are. His feelings consist entirely of frank jubilation and  a kind of religious awe. "Thank goodness, that is one presentation down!" It is hard to keep him from dancing in the aisles.

This sentiment is widely shared across the room.

They haven’t exactly known that you were even up there if you want to know the truth.

How much cooler it is for them to consider, now that they have figured out that you indeed are up there, to further consider that you are almost gone from up there.

They have nothing but warm feelings for you now that you are so clearly done.

It is evident that whatever it was that you have presented on you must have done a tremendous job of it, for there isn’t a question in the house.

This only attests, apparently, to the care in which you laid out your arguments and the cogency of your data.

The audience members applaud as you modestly take a small bow, and they nod vigorously to one another as though to say, “now this young man knows how to make a presentation; if only we had a few more like him I wouldn’t have such worries about the upcoming generation."

Cries of ‘hear, hear’ come from different corners of the room and one and all make certain to include you on the next agenda.

The other occasion takes place on the last time slot of the last day of the conference.

This placement upon the agenda comes with pluses and minuses. Let us cover the minuses first.

If you were going to give a real speech you would always be weighted down by knowing, as you looked out over the sea of peevish and frankly worried faces, that you are the only thing standing between these fine people and the chilled casks of sarsaparilla that are waiting for them at the bar. Casks upon casks of this sarsaparilla, my friend, each standing at attention as though they were soldiers upon a parade ground, and chilled like shards of ice from the North Pole.

It occurs to you that in your casual studies of ancient man you have read that in the old days it was customary at the end of a conference of cavemen, Neanderthals, or early homo sapiens, to simply eat the last speaker before he started ticking off the points he hoped to cover in his presentation, and so bring the conference to an early close.

You have been a member of audiences in exactly this situation at exactly this time of the day, and you can attest to how compelling the case seems to be for doing exactly that to the last speaker, eating him I mean, or maybe even eating the last two or three before him. It would at least shut them up.

This covers the negative or liability side of the balance sheet.

On the positive side, if you are quiet in getting to the podium and discreet as to getting your first slide up there – amounting, as you recall, to a robust 50% of your presentation overall – most of these fine people will be asleep anyway.

It has been a long day and it is the third in a series of long days.

The entertainment has been lively in the evenings, the sarsaparilla has been flowing like some chilled nectar of the ancient gods, and sleep is hard to come by overnight on these hotel beds.

The lunch some hours ago was sumptuous in a way that you aren’t used to and if the essence of that lunch could somehow be distilled into a pill it could find a place in today's thriving pharmaceutical industry and compete effectively with those powerful sedative bullets that are used to stop a charging rhinoceros in its tracks and induce it to lay its head down for a nice mid-afternoon nap.

It is hardly necessary to ask for quiet before you start to speak; the only noise in this half-acre conference room comes from the open mouths of a score of slumbering professionals who have finally given in to the warmth of the room, the several thousands of calories they have consumed, and their simple inability to take in one more damn word on one more damn slide of one more damn presentation if their lives depended upon it.

What could be finer for the presenter?

It is a near-perfect match of speaker and audience: you have nothing to say, and they don’t want to hear it. 

And can't if they wanted to.

Which, again, they don't.

At the end you may say in a loud voice, “if there are no questions, then that concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attention.”

Again, the reception you will get upon these words from this august gathering is as positive as any speaker has ever enjoyed.

Starting awake with a collective groan the members of this multitude will see you up there with the word…           

Questions?

….clear as can be on the screen and draw but one conclusion: in a roomful of attentive colleagues they themselves, and they themselves alone, have somehow or other drifted off.

Such is human nature that to offset this temporary weakness of character the highest-ranking of the recently-asleep is the first in cheering you on, and the first to jump to his feet to give you a standing ovation.

The mood of gratitude and simple wonderment at your skills as a speaker carry on through the late afternoon and you are offered many a glass of sarsaparilla that evening and generally recognized as a fine fellow.

I hope these few tips on presentations can be of use to you. As you see, handled correctly, it’s not so bad an ordeal.