Notes from 5/12/09

5/12/09
Assignments: 2 1-page summaries to distil information specific to an audience
Today: audiences (based on Duarte’s slide:ology pp. 14-17) and email

3 things important to effective writing:
o purpose
o audience (today)
o clarity

Consider your audience’s needs – what is your audience like?
• Think about who? Not just on a professional level
• Target the people in the audience that will have the most questions
o Ex: client at Double Tree presentations
• Why are they listening?
o Some might benefit, they have to, they are passionate about the topic
• What keeps them up at night?
o Try to figure out how they can benefit, make it meaningful to them
• What is your desired outcome? – How can you solve their problem?
o There has to be an outcome, which one is important
• What do you want your audience to do?
o Ex: make a decision, support your research, etc.
• How might your audience resist?

Consider your needs as a presenter
• Not usually a consideration but still important
• Substance targeted to specific audience and specific outcome
• Connecting your needs with final outcome is the best situation

Consider quality of the presentation
• Find common interests, passions, fears to bring your message home to a specific interest
• The way you frame and present the material is crucial
• Topic outside of your area of expertise could be a hard sell

Consider your role in information delivery
• What unique expertise and experience do you contribute?
• What is your purpose for communicating information?
o Inform, motivate, persuade in a certain way
• What do you share in common with your audience?
• What are your desired outcomes?
o What do you want them to do?

We did an exercise answering the following questions for our future career:
• Who am I?
• How can I relate to the audience?
• What is my desired result?

We followed it with an exercise answering the following questions for four audiences: Floatopia organizers, Trekies, Computer Hackers, and Mafia
• What are they like?
• Why are they here?
• What keeps them up at night?
• How can you solve their problem?
• What di you want them to do?
• How might they resist?

Then we answered the speaker questions for four speakers: Donald Trump, Al Gore, Dr. Evil, and Martha Stewart
• Who am I?
• How can I relate to the audience?
• What is my desired result?

Lessons from this exercise:
• Find out the audience’s world view and find a way to adapt your needs as the speaker to fit their view
• Redefine your ultimate, larger goal
• Larger target goal might make you a better presenter

Email Etiquette:
• To enhance clarity, keep it simple, be brief, use bullet points, consider timing, follow up
• Guidelines for bad news messages
o Focus on issues
o Resist and ignore personal attacks
o WAIT, always write calm
o Think about the bigger picture
• Generating positive outcomes from bad news messages
o Consider the human element
o Use humor
o End on a positive note


• **remember, anything you write can be forwarded or distributed

- Emily Welborn