The Presenter’s Manifesto: Part IV

Each Wednesday our blog post is dedicated to storytelling. Stories are part of our DNA here at Ethos3. We’re adamant believers that presentations are stronger and more compelling if anchored in a story. And the evidence is clear: we’re storytelling animals. We tell ourselves stories in order to live. For the next 4 weeks, we’ll be posting excerpts of our story– the presenter’s story– from our Manifesto for Presenters. Download your copy of the e-book here

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It’s fitting to think of our presentations as backpacks. We must feel the weight of the backpack on our backs before we impart its load on our audience. Is it too heavy? Is it too light? Is it an appropriate weight for the content inside?

We must always be mindful that the weight of our backpack, of our presentation, will be resting on another’s shoulders when we finish. Did we explain it simply enough so that the backpack is light and manageable? Did we challenge ourselves to remove superfluous material, to edit further, to delete what is not essential? Did we ensure that our audience will be engaged and compelled by our material, not bogged down by its weight?

(Simplify those slides! If we can’t explain it simply, we don’t know it well enough.)

Our twenty-first century attention deficient audience necessitates concision and pithiness. At best, we have eighteen minutes to make an impact for that is how long the average person’s attention will keep. Eighteen minutes. One thousand and eighty seconds.

(Short is good. Shorter is better.)

We will shine in our brevity. Every word we speak is essential. Every word is there for a reason, a purpose, a point. We will not waste our audience’s time because we know how important time is, and we know how much we hate when our time is wasted.

Our presentations can change the world, and our stories help to anchor their meanings.

Stories inspire our minds and compel us to care. They are what break our hearts and they are what glue the pieces back together. They urge us to strive, strive, strive to live the life we’ve imagined for ourselves.

We are the exceptional and we are the inspired. We are the excited and we are the daring. We are the extraordinary and what we say is essential.

We are presenters, and our presentations can change the world.  

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Click here to download the entire Presenter’s Manifesto. 





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