If you give presentations or plan meetings, conferences, or events you can’t afford to neglect the growing trend of audience engagement.  To me, audience engagement goes far beyond using involvement techniques such as call and response or “turn to your neighbor and discuss. . . “  Genuine audience engagement means the audience plays just as much of a role in the program as the presenter.  It means the audience helps to design the program.  They participate during it.  They, not the speaker, are the focus of attention.

Two articles I read this week do a nice job of making the case that you can’t afford to neglect audience engagement.

In her recent article, the Future of Meetings, Kristin Arnold, author of Boring to Bravo: Proven Presentation Techniques to Engage, Involve, and Inspire Your Audiences to Action, asserts that the very nature of meetings is evolving.  Design and networking are among the trends Arnold discusses:

Presentation expert and author  Olivia Mitchell echoed the fact that presentations are evolving in her recent article, Are You Ready for the Third Era in Presenting?.

Mitchell maintains that there have been three distinct eras of public speaking and presenting to date and that we are now entering “The Era of the Audience”.   She posits that audiences expect and demand to be more involved and that they prefer the use of methods such as Open Space and open Q & A over the old “orator” style where a speech is a carefully crafted, one-way performance.

I have been an advocate for audience engagement for years and personally delight in working with audience members to create programs and experiences that address their needs and interests and engage them in the process.  When creating a custom keynote or engagement event, I often interviews dozens of people who will be attending an event.  I make my “talk” about them and interact with them.  The result is that the presentation, and the entire process of creating it, becomes a conversation.

There may still be some need for presentations that merely inform, or those that entertain.  But I believe the greater need – and demand – is for presentations that engage!