Have you ever been on stage trying to establish a connection with an audience? It can be especially challenging if you don’t know much about them in advance. Sometimes is just can’t be avoided, however you still need to find a way to reach them in those precious first minutes so that you can release your nervousness and get them to pay attention.
I had the honor of being chosen as one of the workshop presenters at the COSE Small Business Conference on Oct. 20 at the IX Center. It is a huge event with 6 or 7 concurrent workshops given during each time slot. A speaker cannot anticipant who will attend or how many for that matter. I was fortunate to have a full room of very diverse participants and I was excited, but also a little nervous. This would be the first time I had ever given this presentation, and I decided to open it by sharing one of my quirks with the audience so we could just get it out of the way. It was an amazing thing! Sharing this short story of less than 1 minute, I relaxed and had a ball leading the workshop. Maybe there’s something you need to tell your audience to connect with them and clear the air? Here’s the video so you can see for yourself how it went.
