Friday, June 6, 2014

Introducing the Speaker


During my speaking career, I have given hundreds of presentations. Sometimes I was almost speechless after I had been introduced, because my introduction surprised even me!

In my intro, I have written the laugh lines in italics and bold text. I ask the introducer to pause after reading the lines for people to laugh. If they are uncomfortable reading it, then I say they can just hit the highlights, but to be sure and say the last line, “Please welcome Robin Thompson . . . speaking with that southern accent” because that leads into the first line of my presentation.

Some of the craziest mix-ups that have happened are:

·      The introducer got so carried away after getting the first laugh that he decided to try to ad lib and make it funnier. By the time he set up his own laugh line, no one even chuckled. He ended abruptly with no mention of my southern accent.
·      The title of my book is Know Stress to No Stress. I put hyphens after the letters and tell them to spell K-n-o-w to N-o Stress. One time the introducer spelled every letter in the title without saying the title first. It was like being on Wheel of Fortune and trying to figure out the title of my book.
·      After reading that I had a masters degree, not a doctorate, she introduced me as Dr. Robin Thompson.
·      One time a speaker was ill and couldn’t give her presentation. I offered to substitute for her. Imagine my surprise as I stood at the back of the room and they began reading the other speaker’s introduction instead of the one I sent!
·      One time someone said, “All I can say is that she better be good.” No pressure there.
·      More often than not I think there is a casting call for the worst reader in the crowd who reads my introduction for the first time into the microphone. One time he kept turning around and asking me how to pronounce words like “graduated” and “recreational therapist.”

I attended a presentation today that was late starting because of technical difficulties with the LCD projector. Then the Internet connection wasn’t working. The speaker was finally able to start and his PowerPoint presentation kept jumping forward. He asked if anyone could help. No one volunteered so I walked to the front of the room and told him to continue with his presentation as I worked with it.

Today’s gift was to fix his slide presentation. It was on automatic advancing mode. So, I changed it to manual operation. He was relieved to be able to continue his presentation at his own pace and not at the speed that the computer dictated.

In Giving,
Robin

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