What’s a Speaker to Do When the Audience Is Tuned Out on Twitter?
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I was at a luncheon recently and my client (who is a young GenXer, smart, and very modern is her business and personal lifestyle), told me that she was appalled at how most of the guests were looking at their small screens rather than at the speaker during a talk that must have taken many hours and care to prepare.
It’s an all-too-familiar sight at conferences and presentations. What’s going on? Have we lost our sense of decency and proclaimed rudeness as the rule for an audience? Are we suddenly in an era of exceedingly boring speakers, and resorting to multi-tasking — returning e-mails to be productive while tuned out? Is there a national epidemic of Attention Deficit Disorder? Or are we audience members actually listening, and commenting on the content of the presentations on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google +, etc. Maybe it just looks rude?
I have heard suggestions that presenters ask the audience to turn off their phones during the presentation. Some companies make employees and guests check mobile devices, as they would a coat, before entering an auditorium. But we are living in a world where people expect access to their mobile devices at all times. That makes all of this sound like an attempt to change human behavior and ignore new communicating habits.
