As we sit up in the gods (section 512 row 10) my kid is on my knee. I lean down so my mouth is close to her ear — I need her to hear me over the noise of the crowd.
“Ready, baby?”
She nods, and we lift our right arms into the air, making our hands into fists at the top.
There’s a trumpet sound before the voice on the PA, the two of us, and 38,000 other people in the stadium yell,
“CHAAAAAAAAAARRRRGE!!!!!”
Having now been to four (count them!) baseball games, I am a fan — but mostly because of a regular thing that happens…
…which is also something that makes the best presentations engaging.
In instructional design, these are called “Colorful Activities”. Before I explain what they are, I’m going to explain why we need them.
This is what people remember from most talks, keynotes, TEDx’s and workshops:
We remember the beginning, we remember the end, and we don’t remember much in the middle.
If you’re a speaker this, clearly, is an issue.
So what can you do about it? You can create some little peaks like this:
Or this:
How do you do this? By adding in what are called “Colourful Activities”.
A colourful activity is basically anything other than you talking at the audience. So it could be a break, an exercise, a joke, or a story.
Peppering your talk (or workshop or webinar) with colourful activities is one of the ways to keep people engaged — even over several hours.
The baseball people have also figured this out. Games can be loooong with a lot of stopping and starting. So they do all of these little colourful activities. Sometimes it’ll be a competition or quiz they run with a random audience member (I always love how hard the crowd cheers for this random woman they’ve never even seen before, because she’s ONE OF US!!!!). Sometimes it’s young women shooting t shirt cannons. My favourite is when the whole crowd joins in on a clap, or a song, or a chant or — the best one! — a CHAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!!!!
If you’re doing a talk, webinar, presentaiton or anything else, MAKE SURE you include Colourful Activites.
Keep people engaged throughout, so you’re not just wasting everyone’s time. Want some support around HOW to do that in a talk? I LOVE helping people write keynotes, talks and presentations! I also run workshops on this for organizations. Let’s start by having a chat, here: yesyesmarsha.com/call
Thanks so much for reading! What are your favourite colourful activities, in talks or ball games? Let me know in the comments below!
You rule!
xx (Yes Yes) Marsha
PS shout out to my instructional design teacher Lee-Anne Ragan for teaching me this! If you want to make your workshops and trainings 5-star rated as often as mine are, YOU NEED HER. Here’s her website: rockpaperscissorsinc.com
PPS want my free guide to the magic bullet for captivating storytelling, along with free coaching via email on storytelling and writing captivating presentations? Join the Yes Yes Family — it’s FREE! Just pop your details in below and I’ll ship the guide over*:
*you can unsubscribe whenever you like because, clearly, I am not the boss of you
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