Monday morning at ASAE Conference

I am going out of order on my blogpost (I will blog about Sunday after this one)... because this morning's opening event sparked me to discuss it here.

As you will read in my next post about Sunday, the ASAE Conference morning events are fun and informative because they are presented as a musical.  Today's was too funny with songs like "If We Had a New Brand" (sung to the tune of "If I Were a Rich Man" from The Fiddler on the Roof), "There's a Space for Us" (West Side Story's "There's a Place for Us") and "Who is Advancing America?" (Also from West Side Story's "I Want to Live in America").  Very entertaining and informative... I loved it!  The music, the dancing, the message were all presented excellently.  I am certain that most of the audience (in a HUGE auditorium) feel the same way.

EXCEPT for the "keynote address" at the end of the event.... OH MY GOODNESS!  I have not witnessed a worse speaker in my life!  That may sound harsh, but it's true.  The message was fantastic (well, the little I remember) but most of it was lost because it was presented so badly.

The address was titled "Associations as Agents of World Benefit" by David Cooperrider.  Sounds really great, doesn't it?  David seems like a brilliant man and he's probably doing some amazing work... but he either needs to take a public speaking course and get a PR agent to prepare his presentations (may I suggest Dan Keeney of DPK Public Relations), or he needs to get someone else to present his message.  Not everyone is a good public speaker, so the former may be a better solution.

David's message seemed to have a lot of value, but I could not follow it.  I looked around the auditorium and noticed a lot of people whispering and falling asleep.  I was saddened by this... I was also BORED OUT OF MY MIND!!!  I've sat through a lot of presentations that were very entertaining but had no value... this was the opposite.

The few take-aways I got from his presentation were that he attended a World Summit (Compact as they called it) sponsored by the United Nations in 2004 (he could have provided something more recent) and a couple of examples where organizations were helping (I can't remember the specifics because I was nearly passed out).

He seemed nervous throughout the presentation, pacing back and forth.  He was not very apt at reading from the teleprompter so it sounded like he was reading (the times where he seemed to not be reading, and speaking from his memories... it was well done and heartfelt).  He also had not timing to his talk, he didn't emphasize specific words and phrases that would have driven the message home; he hurried through the presentation (there was a LOT of material) so most of the information was lost.  Most of the presentation was spoken... very little was shown on the screen which caused him to lose a good percentage of the audience (the visual learners).

I am not trying to attack David in any way in this post... my hope is that someone will read this and reach David to get him to fix his message.  If David does read this, I hope he does not take it personally... I think he needs to find a way to enhance the experience of his message to help recruit and inspire others to join his wonderful and worthy quest.

Comments

[Becky Granger]

I totally agree with you about the speaker - I know there was a message in there but the delivery made it very challenging to process. He's obviously a very smart man with a ton of good information to share but that didn't really come across. The good news is that this is a very solveable problem though, so hopefully he will be able to be more effective in future talks.

[Javier Avellan]

Becky,

Thank you for your comment. I agree, this is definitely a problem that can be fixed easily if he is made aware of it.

I appreciate your involvement.