Passion And Presentations

February 14th seems an appropriate day to write about the intersection of passion, presentations and business. Last week I ran a workshop focused on remote demos and webcasts. It was an interesting format - we actually conducted some face to face training and then sent people out into a different rom to present "remotely" to the rest of the class. Very effective!

I was struck by the contrast between two of the presenters. Presenter Steve (names changed to protect the innocent) was a 8-year veteran. He gave a very polished but unemotional pitch on his solution. Looking at it dispassionately I scored it highly on my checklist - say he got a 86/100. Later in the day we had Presenter Violet who was a 8-month rookie. Violet's presentation was, being generous,  a little rough around the edges -- yet, wow! Did she have passion and enthusiasm for her product. Her score was a 66/100 - a big difference from Steve's.

At the end of the day I gave each participant a sheet with the names of everyone in the class, and asked them to write down what each presentation was about and what they remembered. Violet made the top 3 of everyone in the class (even Steve!). Steve was below the middle of the pack.

Even accounting for the fact that Violet did already gain some points, and Steve lost some, for their respective passion - there was still 20 point difference. Or was there? If you judge a presentation by what people remember and did they take away the key points - you can make the case that Violet "won".