social f/x by Lou Ordorica

Take a slide deck, a presenter, an audience of 40 teleconferenced in, and what do you get? Nothing special. Add twitter to the mix, and you get a whole new animal.

Unless your audience hangs on to every word you speak, you're most likely competing with email, instant messages, web browsing, and dozens of other distractions vying for your listener's attention.

What to do? You can keep your audience involved by giving them something better to do, like having a conversation with other attendees interested in your topic. Setting up a backchannel is risky — you are exposing yourself to scrutiny in very public forum, and you should expect surprises, like:

Immediate feedback. Sometimes it's hard to gauge people's reactions over the phone (especially when lines are muted). Are you keeping their attention, or are they tuning out? Simple messages like this one are reassuring and confidence-building:

mjmsf: @sunflash - this is a GREAT presentation...thanks!

People answering questions for you — and sometimes doing a better job! Asked about integrating a calendar into a wiki, I was at a loss, until a participant saved the day with this tweet:

robcwilson: @sunflash Calander plugin on akula wiki may be an option {calendar:id=communitycal|title=Community Venues Releases} - See Community Software

Formation of ad-hoc groups. Every presenter feels satisfaction when participants come away a little changed after hearing your message. Watching that change unfold in front of you is immensely rewarding, like these folks who decided to start a book club:

esherwoo: @sunflash -- anyone interested in joining a book cluck to read Groundswell, let me know.
JoyceSolano: @sunflash yes please Groundswell book club!
lindabarnum: @sunflash Groundswell book club sounds great!!

New connections. The cloak of anonymity is torn away when people come forward and participate in a dialogue with you and others. Twitter offers opportunities to build relationships with the people you meet, first by getting introduced, then by following one another and getting to know one another, and finding mutual interests.

How does this work? After setting up a twitter account, provide instructions on how to send and view messages during your talk. Tip: use twitter search (example). Be sure to set ground rules. In my case, the teleconference was a private conversation in a corporate setting, and I warned against sharing any sensitive information over the twitter backchannel which is public.

With twitter and tools like it, you can spice up your presentations by engaging your audience in a fun and interactive way. Now, if someone would create slideshare and twitter mashup, that would rock!

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