Blog Post: Ignite Phoenix- Lessons Learned From 5 Minute Presentations

Last night I attended the Ignite Phoenix event.  I learned about capoeira, what happens to your body after you die, and how to travel to space and still be home in time for dinner.  That, and 15 other topics that speakers choose to deliver to an audience of 600 people in a 5 minute presentation with 20 slides that automatically changed every 15 seconds.  Very entertaining stuff.

It’s important to note that these speakers weren’t paid, professional speakers giving sales pitches.  They were ordinary members of the Phoenix community like you and I, speaking about a topic they are passionate about.  It’s one of the coolest things going on in Phoenix .

As I sat in the third deck in the very last row at the Tempe Center of Performing Arts, I learned a thing or two about how to win over an audience and deliver a kick ass speech in five minutes.  Here’s the points:

1)       Even though the presentation is 5 minutes long, and even though your slides automatically change every 15 seconds, take the time to explain what it is that you’ll be talking about so the audience can go on the journey with you.  There wasn’t one boring overview slide in any of the 18 presentations I watched.  

The speaker that did a great job at giving an overview came in ‘Slide Show Karaoke,’ where a speaker had to give a speech based on a slideshow they’d never seen.  As soon as he came out he confessed to the audience that he had a few phobias he’d been trying to get over.  That theme stuck throughout the impromptu presentation as he confessed that he hated Waldo when a picture of Waldo came on, was afraid of people who hide behind pillars as a picture of man hiding behind a pillar appeared, and hated hippies who got perms with tie dyed shirts (imagine that pic).

Speakers often plan the whole presentation without thinking about the first few seconds.  But it’s the first few seconds that allow you to take the audience through the presentation with you.

2)       When you talk about your passion, the rest comes easy.  I heard a guy talk about building custom wii-powered desktop programs for five minutes last night and was into it.  Why?  Because the guy was passionate about it.  You can’t undervalue passion in a speech.

3)       A five minute presentation with automatically changing slides can be more effective than a sixty minute presentation with controlled slides.  I actually had the thought that all of corporate America should incorporate the presentation style displayed at Ignite Phoenix for the sake of efficiency.  Why?  Because it forces you to really know what you want to say and how you want to say it.   

Those are three quick lessons that I took away from Ignite last night.  If you’d like to present, presentation submissions open this morning.  At the very least, follow @IgnitePhoenix on Twitter.

Brett Farmiloe is the social media manager for Jobing.com.  He’s also delivered over 60 presentations to audiences ranging from CEO’s to whiny high school kids. Find him @thatpassionguy on Twitter or on Facebook at facebook.com/brettfarmiloe.