Presentation to the German Colleagues...

So, the day finaaly arrived when the presentation had to be made to the German counterparts. The topic could not be more technical and boring than E-SOA.

Well on the eve of the talk, I sat with my mentor, Thomas Pike, to note down tips to make it appealing to a German audience, who were mostly above 40, had been in the IT industry for over 10 years.
Thomas is British but brought up in Germany as his father was a teacher in a German Highschool. He moved out of Germany soon after his schooling in Germany to UK and spent a few years there where he went to Universtiy and later to Yemen and Middle East and back to UK for working in a financial firm and then later found that attraction to the land where he spent his younger days quite compelling and thus moved to Germany.

Some interesting tips Thomas gave me:
1. An interesting presentation according to him was one where the speaker could speak without looking at the slides, the slides having less text.

2. In India, its the job of the speaker to make sure that the audience has captured his idea but out here the speaker just goes on with what he wants to say not necessarily checking whether he has been understood or not. If somebody has a doubt or rather does not understand he is expected to ask. If the speaker repeats himself over a couple of times the audience might find it rude and offensive and might think that the speaker considers them to be dumb and this turns them off.

3. English has to be slow.

4. If there are questions asked, its a sign that they are understanding it.

5. The crowd is emotionless, so gauging as to how the presentation is being percieved is not so similar to how it is done in India.

6. The crowd does not have a good sense of humour. To crack up the crowd I tried a joke which was reciprocatted by cold, blank and puzzled looks which gave way to chuckles, which were far away from being effortless, when I gave my bit of canned laughter to my own joke. Phew!!! I had never done that before.(The term "pressured to laugh" might be more appropriate here).

7. Whatever is spoken, its the tone and the rythm that captivates the audience.

8, Its not easy to get the crowd in splits or to initiate them to join in on a conversation as simple and "irrelevant" as, How many of You have been to McDonalds ? during an official presentation.

The Topping on the Pizza (I more close to Italy, so I would quote Pizza rather than the cake ... :) ) was when couple of the members said it was interesting and gave some suggestions while I was on my not so keen for feedback but still fishing for compliments mode.

:)