151: Don’t Be Dull And Dusty

<p>Sometimes you see a confident presenter really bomb.  It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does, the contrast is vast.  If they are totally hopeless as their default mode as a speaker and they bomb, well that is understandable.  But a competent presenter bombing shouldn’t occur.  It did and I was wondering what did I just see?  Where did our speaker go wrong? </p> <p>Comedians have this same problem – no one laughs at their jokes and there is not much camouflage for them to hide behind, when all they have is a microphone stand on a stage.  Being in the limelight, at the podium, on stage, up on the dais is a high pressure location.  When you are revealed to everyone as a flop, all your desperate attempts to refloat the Titanic make the whole thing seem even more preposterous, pointless and pathetic.</p> <p>In this case, there wasn’t even a good recognition that things were rapidly going south.  It was only at the end, when it was too late to do anything about it, that the speaker realised he had bombed completely.  The tepid applause reaction at the end was a give away.  The stunning lack of questions a more immediate one.  The whole apparatus of the talk collapsed in on itself, under the weight of its own immense ineptitude.</p> <p>The key issues were a misreading of the audience and an astounding arrogance.  The audience had been lured to the venue with bold promises of goodness and light.  The content just wasn’t good enough to back up the advertising and the audience spotted the gaping gap straight away.  They were there for answers.  There weren’t any and they knew it. </p> <p>The arrogance was an assumption about the speaker’s credibility being sufficient to justify the content of the presentation.  When we emphasise our many years in business, we are aiming for increased credibility, linked back to our stupendous track record.  We have stood the test of time etc.  Our speaker had not properly prepared the presentation.  He gave it a “once over lightly” treatment, because of his supreme confidenc