What Your Audience Deserves - And How to Make Sure They Get It

By EDGE Women Speaker Azella C. Collins, MSN, RN

Success!  Advancement! Opportunities!  

We all strive for success, advancement, and professional opportunities, yet they don’t come easily. In a time when fewer paths to advancement present themselves, how do you set yourself above the crowd? How do you reach your full potential? For many people, it comes from attending seminars and workshops to gain new insights and gather new knowledge. To educate yourself for future growth.

Speakers can play a critical part in someone’s learning journey for advancement. As a speaker, I know we all succeed when each audience member of a keynote or a workshop session leaves with two to three new ideas to help them advance in their chosen field.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen with every speaker. I’m sure you remember attending a seminar where you learned very little. Where the speaker read from notes the entire time, or rarely made eye contact with the audience, or exhibited no authenticity and failed to impart any new knowledge. Your audience deserves better.

I’ve experienced bad speakers myself and it is such a missed opportunity. 

It is why I ask three important questions of each client before my presentation. I strive to know: 

1. What do they hope to achieve from the information I share?

2. What are their event objectives? 

3. What are the goals and vision of the host organization and how are they positioning for success? 

With that knowledge, I make sure my topics are engaging, entertaining, and offer immeasurable benefits to the audience by:

• Breaking complex items into small sound bites 

• Providing concrete actionable steps for implementation. 

• Personalizing the presentation by weaving in common language they are used to hearing.

• Maintaining a servant mindset... I am there to meet their needs.

As a black woman, I equally understand the need to be highly skilled in your chosen field so that success and advancement are obtainable. To be chosen, you need to stand out from the crowd. As such, I don’t just want the audience to take something away, I want every meeting professional I work with to have a fabulous event so they too can “stand out” from the crowd.

EDGE Women Speakers consistently provide the same high caliber level of service to event professionals and audiences around the world. We will work on your timeline and contribute to your long-term goals. We understand the importance of 'happy and satisfied audiences' as well as audiences who come back again and again, share what they have learned, and encourage their colleagues and peers to attend your events.

Because at EDGE Women Speakers, we succeed when you do.

#transformative #empowering #breakingthestatusquo #experienced #meetingpros

The One Attendee Whose Needs You Might Be Missing

By EDGE Women Speaker Debbie Vyskocil

Event and meeting planners often are so busy they don't have time to enjoy the event process they have worked so hard to create.

Do you remember why you initially entered this business?

At 10 pm Ann does her final check-in with her clients who are in the hotel bar laughing and drinking. Their event is officially finished for the day and the clients appear very happy. Another successful day! They ask her to join them and have fun, but she has to confirm details for tomorrow where it all begins again at 7 am. There are emails to be checked and the final polish needs to be done on a proposal for an upcoming conference for another client. 

It is 12:30 am when she finally falls asleep; only to be awoken at 5 am by her alarm. Without this early morning run to the gym, Ann knows she would never survive these jam-packed days. With 3,000 people at her event, there is a good chance at least one will be in the gym, but ear-buds in hand she is off. “Great, an elliptical facing out the window and the sun rising over Denver!” She quiets all thoughts of work and practices her mindfulness meditation on the machine for the next 60 minutes. 

It takes discipline and great effort to take care of yourself during these conferences; Ann knows this too well. Is it worth it? Ann wouldn't hesitate to say yes! The moment she hits the conference floor at 7 am it is nonstop smiling, firefighting, and client hand holding.  

Self what?

Do you practice self-compassion? Self-compassion is the ability to be kind to ourselves. Do you remember the last time you had a massage, sat outside on a gorgeous day or took a walk just because it felt good? Your job description includes taking care of clients, but when do you take care of yourself? 

Psychologists say you can't love anyone else until you love yourself. Flight attendants tell us we need to put our oxygen mask on before helping others. Why is it such a challenge to be compassionate to ourselves in the same way we are to those we care about?

As a business owner, speaker, board member, EDGE founder, and self-admitted perfectionist, I am empathetic to my planner clients. It would be easy to be sucked into nonstop "doing", worn down from constant tasks, and eventually exhausted and used up. We are all most valuable to our families, our clients and ourselves if we can keep our emotional and physical sails tended. So I ask again when was the last time you were kind to yourself?

Really? Add one more item?

Old habits are hard to change and the life of a meeting or event planner is based on a calendar and commitments. Start with a commitment to yourself and an appointment on the calendar with someone else. We are much more likely to keep an appointment with others than with ourselves. Today schedule a hair blowout appointment, coffee with a friend or a walk with your spouse.

Each year I attend a conference with a friend from Dallas and one from Denver. We make a point of walking with coffee in hand, before sunrise to laugh and explore the city. It is our only time out of the conference center for the day and our only quiet time to rejuvenate. The difference in my day following that morning walk is indescribable and since I make the commitment to them, I never miss it. 

Simply put, treat yourself with the same compassion that you do a close friend. You would not expect your closest friends to be perfect or work without a break to rejuvenate. And they would never expect it from you.

Instead of being on your laptop the next time all attendees are in sessions, take 15 minutes for yourself. Congratulate yourself for a successful event and be mindful of the happiness of your current attendees. I am confident you will be reminded of your success in the eyes of your clients and attendees which will remind you why you are in this business.

Want To See an Expert Show Her Worth? Watch Something go Wrong

By EDGE Women Speaker Azella C. Collins, MSN, RN

There was a loud “THUNK!” followed by a long, crackling “Sissssss…”

Thirty people were lined up across four aisles of the auditorium, standing behind microphones ready to ask questions when the sound system went out.

“THUNK, THUNK …….sisss, sisss…”

The speaker could see mouths moving and could dimly hear murmuring from the crowd. The sisssss was the sound system short-circuiting. The speaker moved to the edge of the stage and shouted, “Download ‘WO MIC’ to your laptop,” repeating again, “download WO MIC to your laptop!” There was no contingency for not having a sound system for a packed 250-seat auditorium.

Luckily there were two female students from Oslo, Norway who rushed to the stage and asked if they could help. They clearly understood what the speaker was asking the audience to do. Within 3-4 minutes they were able to connect WO MIC to their laptops.  While they worked with the audience to connect to their laptops and download the app to their smart phones, the speaker developed two additional slides: one stating which app to download and the second explaining Murphy’s Law in detail. A speaker’s got to have fun, right? After her two new “assistants” had downloaded the app, they each stood at one of the four defunct microphones to enable the participants to ask questions using the makeshift sound system. 

The speaker heard and answered every question -- almost 32 in total.

The entire episode, which could have been a disaster, was quickly resolved with participants leaving not only satisfied but also better informed. The Chapter president Binavarti Ranasinge  thanked the quick-on-her feet speaker over and over again, as well as the two young ladies.

Why do I know all of this? That speaker was I.

Despite all of our technology advances, it never ceases to amaze me (or other speakers I know) the amount of times something goes wrong around a speech. Sound system going out? You haven’t heard the half of it. How about fire alarm going off? Electrical black out? A computer that freezes up mid presentation? A clicker that never seems to move a slide forward (if I had a dollar for every time this has happened…). And it’s not just technical difficulties that can upend a presentation. We’ve all shared war stories as speakers about situations that did not lend themselves to a productive speech.

Know this: mishaps WILL happen.

Your best insurance for success is an expert speaker who can handle them.

In my case, this event wasn’t even planned.. I was invited to speak in Shanghai and Colombo, Sri Lanka. Thanks to positive audience response, I was asked to give a third speech in Negombo, Sri Lanka the following Saturday. It would be a different audience -  millennials. I knew that I had to reshape my message for it to resonate. I also recognized that additional information was required to ensure that the topic focused on objectives the president of Negombo Speaks felt would most benefit the group. A speech was fully developed with limited jargon, appropriate humor, and no metaphors.

When the Saturday arrived I followed my routine preparation: practiced on stage, checked the sound system, worked the power point and worked with stage lighting crew to ensure that my best side was prominently featured (yes, we do pay attention to that!). Despite all of this preparation, we still had a mishap on the day: a sound system gone kaput. Fortunately, as an expert speaker who is up on her tech, I knew just what to do.

That problem could have deprived my audience of really valuable questions and could have let down the president. Instead, our audience learned invaluable information and I gained two new assistants (at least for a couple of hours!).

So the next time you are planning an event and hiring speakers, maybe here’s a question to add to your list to make sure your speaker is prepared:

• Describe the last time disaster struck during one of your presentations

• How did you handle it?

Because you need to expect the unexpected and an expert speaker is your best insurance.