"Where has all your audience gone? Short time passing.  Where has all your audience gone?  Long time to go!"

Sung to the tune of . . . I'm sure you guessed it!

They could be:

• Playing with their iPods.
• Emailing on their Blackberry.
• Thumbing through photos they took on the conference tour.
• Scanning in the business cards they collected at break.
• Taking photos of sleeping co-workers to use as future bargaining tools.
• Text messaging their significant other.
• Reading an eBook.
• Entering their trip receipts.
• Surfing the Web.
• Playing games on their Treo.
• Watching a movie on an iPhone.

Okay!  That is Eleven.  You get the picture!  This competition is stiff!  It is wired.  It is accessible.  It can be seductive if not downright addictive.  You as the presenter have a tougher job than at almost any other time in history (or herstory too for that matter!).

The way you can compete, of course, is by being a good presenter and having a relevant and excellent presentation.  But while we are on that subject, I want to add some other competitors to the list:

• Reading the handout that you passed out.
• Reading what is on the slide instead of listening to what you are saying.

The last one is especially important.  Stephen Kosslyn nails it in his new book Clear and to The Point:

In the bad old days, before the PowerPoint program existed, speakers would distribute handouts at the beginning of a presentation.  The members of the audience then did exactly what you would expect them to do: They began to read the handout, ignoring what the speaker was saying.  . . .

The modern equivalent of passing out handouts occurs when you give the viewers options about what to pay attention to on a slide.  Instead of listening to you, the audience will ignore you while busily examining the slide, reading the text, and looking at the pictures. 

Do you have more to add to the list?  I forgot

• Picking their nails
• Sleeping, nodding
• Playing Hangman or Tic-Tac-Toe

Comments

[anon]

Finding an audience to live off is extremely difficult these days.Catching eyeballs is what matters everywhere. Even for service professionals like doctors(who cannot ethically advertise in many countries!)
I have been working at it too, but with no results till now.
Have already tried my hand at 2-3 projects without any success.
There is competition everywhere. Looks like many like me will have to give up and look for a desk job at the big companies who already have some eyeballs to cater to.