Attention please!

Have you ever had to wrestle with the roar of an aeroplane's engines for the attention of your audience?  If you have ever spoken at an open air event in any of the neighbourhoods near the airport, you will understand exactly what I mean.  "And the winner is....the jet plane!"  No speaker can compete with that monstrous level of noise and win.  But silence can be an awesome adversary too.  At a recent awards event, my competition was a five-minute slideshow on replay.  After three minutes of standing in the middle of the stage and failing spectacularly to grab my guests' attention, I signaled the organizer to turn the slideshow off.  Immediately, attention was focused on the stage and our event burst into life.

How you begin is important.  Your audience must clearly hear you tell them what is happening, why it is important and who is involved.  If a plane has just taken off over your event venue, let it pass before you start.  If the audience is more interested in a slideshow, turn it off to make way for your opening remarks.

You can kick off with humour.  This may involve your observations of current affairs or things you may have seen or overheard at the event itself.  Be warned though - humour has its own challenges.  If you get a very enthusiastic response, the audience will expect your entire presentation to be liberally sprinkled with moments of laughter .  Get it wrong and you'll wish the ground could open wide to swallow you whole.  There is no embarrassment like what you feel when you are rewarded with blank stares after you said something you thought was hilarious.

Other ways to begin talking to your audience include telling a short story, asking a rhetorical question or simply getting your listeners to repeat a phrase after you.  Remember the goal is to get off to a strong start by grabbing people's attention.