{"id":3522,"date":"2022-05-21T09:39:54","date_gmt":"2022-05-21T15:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=3522"},"modified":"2022-05-21T09:39:54","modified_gmt":"2022-05-21T15:39:54","slug":"how-to-be-a-good-conference-talk-audience-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/3522","title":{"rendered":"How to be a good conference talk audience member"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently attended a conference and was both a speaker and audience member. It was on the smaller side; there were probably a few hundred attendees and the audiences ranged from about twenty to hundreds of attendees for the keynotes.<\/p>\n<p>After one of the talks, a speaker came up and said &#8220;you were such a good audience member, thank you!&#8221;. I said the same thing to one of the attendees of the talk I gave.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to share how you can be a good audience member at a conference talk. It&#8217;s important to note that this advice is for attending in-person talks where the speaker can see the audience. This is typically when there are up to one hundred people. I&#8217;ve spoken in front of 800 people and it&#8217;s a different experience. While some of these principles apply, in general individual behavior is less important as audience size grows.<\/p>\n<p>And online talks are an entirely different experience for everyone, both audience and speaker! I don&#8217;t have enough experience to give any advice for that scenario.<\/p>\n<p>First, though, why would you <strong>care<\/strong> to be a good member of an in-person audience? After all, you are providing your time and money to the conference and the presenter. Isn&#8217;t it the speaker&#8217;s <strong>job<\/strong> to entertain and educate <strong>you<\/strong>? Why would you expend any energy to help them do so?<\/p>\n<p>First, I&#8217;m a big fan of being respectful of other human beings and helping them succeed. Public speaking is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/us\/blog\/smashing-the-brainblocks\/201711\/why-are-we-scared-public-speaking\">common fear<\/a> and being a good audience member can reassure the speaker and reduce that fear. It&#8217;s hard up there, whether it&#8217;s your first talk or your hundredth.<\/p>\n<p>The second reason is that you can make a talk better for <strong>yourself<\/strong>. You can learn more and you can tune their presentation to your needs. They are an expert and you can take advantage of their expertise.<\/p>\n<p>So, here are my tips on how to be a great audience member:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, remember that you <strong>don&#8217;t<\/strong> owe the speaker your time, but you <strong>do<\/strong> owe them respect. If you aren&#8217;t interested in the talk, if it isn&#8217;t what you thought it would be, or if you have another commitment or pressing issue to address, leave the room. Don&#8217;t make a big show of it, but get up, walk quietly to the door, open it carefully, and depart.<\/li>\n<li>Since you&#8217;ve decided to stay, pay attention. Silence your phone. Turn off your computer. If you want to take notes using your laptop, disable wifi so you won&#8217;t be distracted.<\/li>\n<li>When you understand and agree with something, nod and smile. This feedback provides the speaker a signal that they are reaching you.<\/li>\n<li>If you don&#8217;t understand, frown or make a questioning face. No need to harumph, but give the presenter feedback that the topic is confusing or that they haven&#8217;t made their point clearly.<\/li>\n<li>If you have questions, ask them. Speakers should inform you if they want to be interrupted with questions during the talk up front, but if they haven&#8217;t, a polite hand raise should be acknowledged. If it isn&#8217;t, save your questions for the end.<\/li>\n<li>When asking questions, realize you may not get a complete, satisfactory answer. If you don&#8217;t, I&#8217;d avoid a secondary question. Instead approach the speaker after for a more in-depth discussion.<\/li>\n<li>If you didn&#8217;t like or understand the talk, give that feedback to the speaker afterwards. No need to be rude, but saying something like &#8220;I wish you&#8217;d given more background on &lt;X&gt;&#8221; or &#8220;It seemed like you skipped over the complexities with &lt;Y&gt;&#8221; will help the speaker improve their talk.<\/li>\n<li>If you feel moved to do so, thank the speaker afterwards. This is not required but a talk is a lot of work and any feedback is usually welcomed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Am I always a good audience member? Nope.<\/p>\n<p>I get distracted sometimes.<\/p>\n<p>But when I follow my suggestions above, I learn more from the expert on the stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently attended a conference and was both a speaker and audience member. It was on the smaller side; there were probably a few hundred attendees and the audiences ranged [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conferences","category-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3523,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3522\/revisions\/3523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}