The Virus and it’s Rats’ Tail

Time to push the panic button

No, you can no longer calmly enjoy your life and go on to seize the day without worrying where your next roll of toilet paper will be from, as the supermarket shelves are empty. What’s going on right now affects all of us. There are a few smart people among us who try to encourage and inspire people and businesses for long-term thinking but only with mild success, because we all rather linger in the meditative here and now. Therefore, we can’t imagine how something like a pandemic can hit us so unexpectedly. But when an emergency occurs, we throw ourselves on our backs, scolding business leaders, industries and the government. Everyone is to blame but ourselves.

Personally, I am a bit reluctant to write an article about the situation, but this is what I can contribute.  If I had become a doctor, my role in a time like this would be clearer and probably more valuable.

How do we get out of this neck of the woods?

EVENTS – CANCELLED   

CONFERENCES – CANCELLED   

TRADE FAIRS – CANCELLED   

BUSINESS MEETINGS – CANCELLED

“But we should have presented at this event, our customer acquisition depends on it.” Currently many conversations with our client’s sound similar to this. So much as already happening online nowadays; personal contact, human interaction and sympathy of a face to face meeting with clients and business partners are still essential for our business development.

Business is almost at a standstill, companies are calling for their emergency plans, employees are staying at home as a safety precaution, projects are being withdrawn and trips are being cancelled.

But we can’t all go home and wait till this blows over. We need alternatives and solutions. For contemporary services and for us here in the digital world, there is still a lot to do and we can provide virtual support.

The word “digitalization” has been categorized as a buzzword of bullsh*t bingo, like “mindset”, “heads-up” and “in the loop” … (OMG TMI)

But now we are glad that there are so many types of digital professions and that global networks don’t completely break down and must fear for their existence. Many of us can continue to work from home and probably several meetings will be enabled after all.

It is of course a pity not to shake hands, not to have a cocktail at the bar with colleagues and business partners but BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY.

What can we do? The show must go on!

Business life has to go on somehow and many events and conferences can now be held online. Which is much safer but what exactly could be missing?🤔

Right, presence.

We create many PowerPoints for people who are presenting in front of an audience, who convince with their presentations with personality and presence. Is it possible to present online with the same intensity? Is it possible to identically convey your message? Or do you think information will get lost?

Of course, this is more difficult, no question. So, how do we “translate” a presentation that would have had a personal impact with strength and appearance into an effective online version?

Offline – Online – Useful Tipps

>In an online conference you don’t feel the resonance<

The setting is of course completely different. Whether an employee is sent to a conference, sits in the audience and listens to your presentation, or whether he or she sits at the computer in the home office and listens to your presentation is a huge difference.

You know it yourself when you are online. You switch your microphone to mute, sit at your desk and you are usually busy with something else on the side. You are eager to hear the lecture, you are curious about the speaker and even if he is shown in the picture below his slides, you might looking at the slides and you have his voice in your ear but on the second monitor you are working in things didn’t get to do yet and you consider this time an opportunity. Clearly, the speaker does not have your full attention.

For some speaker who might be nervous about presenting it might be a relief, not to stand in front of an audience on a stage in a room full of people, but it can be difficult for the outcome of the presentation.

As a speaker you suddenly don’t stand in dialogue with the audience, you don’t feel the energy. So it may happen that you have a topic that you would have been able to finish quite a bit faster in an auditorium, you might go above and beyond to make sure that everyone on the monitor could follow along.

The general need for the speaker to be as clear as possible is more difficult to test online than in person.

>In an online conference, your slides must look different<

You can’t rely on your presentation being just visual support for the spoken word. Under the difficult conditions your slides have to speak for themselves in places. So you have to rethink your approach, from the rules of speaker presentation to the rules of self-running presentation, and find the balance.

It is not enough to show a picture and rely on the fact that your entire text of your speech is perceived and understood completely. You need more text that supports your image and core message even more. It should not mean that online participants can’t get out of reading, but you need to visualize more content than you would have needed in a live presentation. Naturally the amount of text will increase per slide.

Taking Action! Take the bull by its horns!

Now we are being completely unreasonable and dream of a quick recovery, so that soon we can all go to large events again and drink a toast to health and well-being together. Nevertheless, we have to ask ourselves how we all react here in order to offer communicative added value even in a critical phase.

It is probably impossible to imagine what all this will cost. The stock market is in a nosedive, livelihoods are threatened and therefore we all have to do what we can to support customers and business partners. We can do this through communication and by helping to shape such online events and meetings in a meaningful way to deliver the best possible results for their presentations.

In any case, for me it is clear. We are always available to answer your questions about digital communication and online presentations and hope that we can help you develop your business, inspire your customers and deliver good presentations.