This is the second in a two-part series about making better genealogy presentations when you’re away from home. Part one was Top 10 ways to deliver a better genealogy presentation in another country, province, state or city.
Imagine delivering a presentation in Australia about ‘genealogy research in newspapers’ — and speaking solely about Canadian publications.
Unless your presentation was called Genealogy Research in Canadian Newspapers, the audience would likely be disappointed and disgruntled. They would be right to assume you had no interest in them and couldn’t be bothered including resources that would be useful to them.
While preparing a presentation is the speaker’s responsibility, genealogical societies can do their part to ensure the presentation is a success.
After all, presentations that are customized for the audience make happier attendees, which helps attract people to the next conference, lecture, meeting or webinar.
Some societies, however, leave all guess work about the audience, their interests, and level of knowledge to the speaker, and hope all goes well.
A friend of mine spoke at a genealogical society’s monthly meeting a few years ago. I was surprised at her presentation topic. When I asked her what they had said when they first contacted her, she said, “Not much. They asked me what I wanted to talk about and told me how long to speak and when the meeting takes place.”
I asked if they share any information about the expected audience and what they would like to hear. She said, “No.”
That society did a disservice to the speaker and to their members and potential members who attended.
If only they had briefed the speaker.
The speaker’s good presentation could have become great.
Top five
Here are the top five ways genealogical societies can help their speakers, from near and far, deliver better presentations.
- Brief the speaker about the audience, their level of knowledge and interest, and what their expectations will be.
- Provide guidelines and directives about the need for local, regional and/or national content in the presentation and handout.
- Offer to direct the speaker to where they can find and learn about local, regional and/or national resources.
- Recommend the speaker put emphasis in their presentation on the local, regional and/or national resources and to start the presentation and handout with the local and regional content, followed by resources from elsewhere.
- Provide a head’s up about a local or national event, such as a municipal anniversary, local festival, holiday, or society anniversary so the speaker can understand references to such an event and, if desired, acknowledge the event in their presentation.
