Date: 26th November 2019
Time: 7.00-9.30pm
Topic: Dr. Rich Allen
Event: Monthly Meeting
Writer: Margo Regan

The PSANZ had the privilege of hosting guest speaker Dr. Rich Allen on Tuesday 26th November 2019. Rich shared his extensive knowledge on education and training. Here are some great practical ideas to apply to your next keynote or training workshop.
1) Individuals struggle to pay attention for longer than 10 minutes. Therefore it’s a good idea to add pauses into your talk. This allows people
to take in your information and encode it from their short-term to long-
term memory.
2) Music can greatly enhance training sessions. It can be used as white noise to help individuals feel more comfortable when they are talking to each other. Music can also create energy in the room.
3) If you use printed materials to give to the audience, resist the temptation to hand them out. Instead, put them at the back of the room and ask people to collect them. This will give people the chance to have a stretch, exercise, and rejuvenate. Refrain from talking until the audience has returned to their seats with their hand-outs.
4) If you have a slideshow, use standby mode between slides. This ensures
that the audience’s attention is on you and not on a blank screen.
5) Slides are a visual medium so avoid lots of writing on them as this
detracts from your presentation and is difficult to read from a distance.
6) Use physiology to your advantage when presenting. When you first show
a slide, cease talking to let the audience take it in and turn your body
towards the slideshow.
7) It’s best to avoid tables for audience members to sit at. Not only do they
add distance from the stage, but they may also have distracting devices on
them such as iPhones or laptops, which can take attention away from you
as a speaker.
8) Make a personal connection to the content that you are sharing. The more you can make a connection with it, the more the audience can connect with it. They will get a sense of authenticity.
9) Introverts and extroverts engage and interact very differently as an audience. So it’s good for a speaker to have ways to identify the personality learning engagement preferences of the people they are talking to. One technique is to notice whether their audience enjoys talking to each other or not. If it is an extroverted audience, then you may want to allocate more time to talking activities. If the audience appear more introverted, consider spending more time sharing structured content.
10) As a speaker, be aware if talking to people is energy-draining or energy-giving. If you are an introverted speaker, then you may want to allocate more alone time to re-charge.