Steve Aoki is one of the world’s top electronic dance music (EDM) producers and DJs. He performs all over the world and has what can only be described as a highly energetic and entertaining show. Recently. a question was asked on Quora, a questions and answers website, about what Steve Aoki is doing when he is on stage. Steve Aoki answered the question himself and below is his reply:
“For the most part, I know what my set is going to be going into a show, but it can change depending on the crowd. If you’re going to be playing your music and it’s unknown to the crowd, you have to keep it interesting in order for them to stay. It’s just like when you hear someone give a speech and they just read off the cues with no feeling because they’re so tense about it. That doesn’t move you. You have to enjoy the music and have fun, or at least look like you’re having a good time up there…
You have to be flexible and know that your plan may go off course.
There will always be variables that you can’t control. When you have a technical foul up, the whole place thinks it’s your fault and you have to figure out how to recover from that bad joke you just told. The recovery is just as important as being flawless and it’s hard. Imagine being on stage as a comedian and you say a really bad joke or offend someone and they’re really pissed of at you. What do you do? You recover but that recovery may not be the next part of your script. You have to be one your toes up there.”
What Steve Aoki says in his reply is exactly the same for presenters. Your audience have come to see you ‘perform’ to give them a ‘show’. They have not come to be bored witless by you reading your prepared script from the slides or your computer. They want you to interact with your message, your slides (if you are using them) and they want to go away feeling they have learned something new and important.
Too often presenters think all they have to do is prepare a group of slides that contain almost all their script, with poorly selected images and charts and then stand in front of an audience and read to them what they could very easily read on your slides. This is wrong, so wrong and it needs to change.
When you know you are going to have to do a presentation, one of the first questions you need to ask is who is my audience? From that answer, you need to prepare a presentation that entertains, educates and leaves a lasting impression on that audience. So, if you are presenting to a small group of your colleagues, do you really need to prepare a 30 slide slide deck? Would it not be better to prepare a slidedoc and email it to your colleagues a few days before? That way they have time to absorb your contents and have questions ready. Or perhaps you are presenting to a large group of new employees. Would it not be better to slip in a few relevant videos and pictures of your team working and actually doing their jobs, rather than showing a chart of your management structure? (showing a chart of your management structure in a presentation slide is just not funny anymore. It is plain and simple stupidity)
And then, when things do go wrong, and they will, can you carry your presentation without the use of technology? If there is a technical hitch, can you keep your audience’s interest while the tech people are fixing the problem? These are the things that count and if you can continue without the technology, then you really are becoming a master presenter.
There is a lot we can learn from amazing people like Steve Aoki, people who really understand their audience and what they want. And as presenters that is something we have to understand. What our audience really wants.