We see this technique almost every time we go to the movies — a series of ads from local merchants that are flashed on the screen every few seconds or so while we are getting into our seats. Using a modified concept of this can be a great way to warm up and inform your audience before you even begin a presentation.
Create a self-running loop of simple but informative slides interspersed with a few feel-good, slice-of-life images and you have the perfect walk-in experience for your audience. By the time you begin your presentation they will already have absorbed some of your essential background information. Additional interspersed photographic images can help build a visual or emotional connection for what is to come. Depending on the situation, you can apply some tasteful branding to some or all of the slides, utilize consistent layouts or even mix it up a little.
A few words of advice:
- Don’t rush them. Leave each slide on the screen long enough so that it can be casually read. In the attached example I settled on 15 seconds for each.
- Keep your slide transitions simple and slow — I used a simple fade.
- Don’t try to tell too much — this is no place to overload your future listeners.
- Make sure you have enough slides — you don’t want them to bore them with an endless loop of the same information for the 10 minutes or so that they are settling into their seats.
Example: This is a sample of a slide set created to warm-up the audience before an MBA info session at a state university. Note: I have sped up the transitions from the original 15 seconds to five seconds for the sake of the video.
