This evening, I found myself stepping outside of what I consider to be my professional demeanor. I sat with a group of people I respect and watched a speaker lose control of what he was saying because of how he presented it. He lost his audience, and his audience did not give him the respect that he deserved because of how he delivered his message.

What can we all learn from this experience?

1) While it may be funny at the time, you’ll regret ridiculing the person and the delivery. At first, it was funny… later, I was embarrassed. Embarrassed for him, and embarrassed for us. We’re all better than that. To be completely honest, I don’t feel better about myself for going along with any of it.

2) If you’re presenting, KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. You might have the key to saving the world, but if you fail in the delivery… no one will listen. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the human condition. Your responsibility as a presenter is to ensure appropriate communication of your thoughts. When you don’t effectively communicate and are then taken to task for that error, take your lumps and find a better method to share your message.

Maybe more importantly, do your research ahead of time to know your audience well. If a large percentage of those people blog/Tweet/present about “Death by PowerPoint,” perhaps it would be best to find something other than PowerPoint to aid in sharing your information.

We have all probably made similar mistakes in our own presentations somewhere along the road. Did we judge more harshly tonight because of the magnitude of the event? Because the speaker was paid? Because of who we- the audience- are and what we expect? I’m guessing some combination of all of those.

However, what kind of message did WE send with our behavior? I expect to take some lumps for my “delivery” – in this case, it was behavior. I’m not blaming anyone else for how I behaved – what I said, what I sent out through my network. That’s mine, and I have to own it and deal with any repercussions.

That little voice that’s always in my head reminded me of something– I’ve been talking to a few people the last few days at ISTE about intellectual snobbery and how careful we must be not to look down our noses at our colleagues or students because they don’t have as many letters behind their names or because they are new to what we’ve all been doing for the last 5, 10, 20 (whatever the number) years.  Tonight, I’m thinking I need to practice what I preach.