Anxiety & the Conference Presentation

Preparing for any kind of presentation always takes me much longer than I feel it should.  As I prepare for this panel presentation at RSA this week, the same anxieties are resurfacing again. It isn’t that I’m anxious about people watching me, or that I’ll trip and fall, or stumble over words, lose the war with technology, or drop my notecards (although those things HAVE happened to me in the past). For me, the anxiety comes from the fear that I won’t connect with my audience. Will they get it? Will I be able to bring them along the journey of ideas I am attempting to lay out before them? 

Because really, let’s be honest. We’ve all seen the presenter trip, drop the notecards, or fumble with tech behaving badly. And when we do, we forgive them and even feel embarrassed on their behalf. These are excusable things. These annoyances don’t necessarily disrupt the relationship between speaker and listener.  Unless it is a clear case of the speaker just really not being adequately prepared, we can work with a bit of nervous tripping over wires. 

Preparation, however, is key, and not just preparation of the practice-my-delivery sort either. I’m talking about a presentation prepared for a particular audience on a particular occasion – kind of like that delicious Italian hoagie made especially for you with oil and mayo, no peppers, hold the oregano, extra provolone on a hard roll. We have ALL seen the presenter that exhibits no sense of kairos, didn’t prepare well or at all, isn’t engaging, presents a confusing argument, or has clearly recycled the presentation from another gig.  We may politely nod along like a good little audience, but inside we’re angry! We feel our time is wasted and that the speaker only cares about (in the words of my 6-yr-old daughter) “puffing up his attitude” (or CV). We take notes just to pass the time and avoid slinking down into the uncomfortable hotel conference room chairs.  We want the disrespectful presenter to just. Stop. Talking. Now. Please. 

I do not ever want to inflict this agony.  My goal is always to invite my victims into a conversation I’m trying to situate for them. I want them to “get it,” so they can take the ideas from the jumping off point I’ve provided and engage the issue further.  There are myriad junctures at which the listener can be lost, and that is the root of so much of my anxiety. How much do they already know? Is this the right visual aid? How much does this group need on a slide? How loaded is this term? How much unpacking is necessary without being a bore? Is this topic going to anger someone in the audience? Then add to those the host of universal design issues that I’m sure I’m handling the wrong way.

Same topic, similar spin doesn’t ever equal identical presentation. This particular presentation is headed towards its fourth iteration. Beginning as a written project for a grad class on rhetorical analysis, it next had to be shaped into something suitable for an online audience during class. I believe we had maybe 10 minutes, and there was a great deal of typing (or cut/pasting) involved. Knowing classmates would have the transcripts to read through after class alleviated any worry over pacing or vocal presentation as the main goal was to get the essentials pasted into the chat box as quickly as possible while simultaneously being able to answer questions from other MOO inhabitants. A third iteration involved morphing the topic into 1/3 of a panel presentation on rhetorical agency to be delivered at last summer’s May Seminar in Lubbock. Aside from the challenges of tweaking the presentation of the topic to fit within the panel framework, there was also pressure to create something that would be engaging to an audience composed of  peers at all stages of coursework and faculty. Sure, we’re all TTU TCR, but the diversity of experience, interests, and expectations is of wide girth.  May Seminar presentations can be classic, and as much as possible presenters must try to “choke them out.”  (We miss you GZ!)

This time, my topic is being shaped for an audience of rhetoricians about whom I know very little aside from their own presentation titles. I’m a smart cookie, but I always have terror that I’m the least intelligent person in the hotel when I go to these things. I study the program to see who is going to be there and what they’ll be talking about. I look for themes, recurring topics. I read up on the conference speakers. And then I decide on the answers to the questions I ask above. (I also go see my therapist and pace a lot and have wine and breathe to my center. )  While I’m at a conference, I go to sessions to do recon work – gathering info on the tone and quality of other sessions. I take note of hecklers. I internalize which mistakes not to make. Then I might adjust some more. Usually, I end up realizing that I’m NOT the least intelligent person there, nor the most dreadful, and I do have some interesting goods to deliver.  It would be nice to arrive at that conclusion without the wash of anxiety, but for me that’s probably not going to happen. I always have to walk through it to get to the other side.