Planning An Event: If You Think You Can’t, You’re Right.
It was their company’s first ever breakfast seminar. Sally Thompson had never designed a seminar before. She knew the start time, the finish time and had a list of presentations that had to be made but could she make it fit?
Remember that, for maximum impact, each hour of an event should be divided equally into one third listening, one third discussing and one third doing. So, for every hour you really only need a script for twenty minutes and, if you are using a PowerPoint type presentation, a well-paced speaker will “talk to” one slide of the presentation every 3 minutes on average. You therefore need around 7 text slides each with no more than 7 bullet points to generate a one-hour chunk of the event.
This is obviously a rough guide but when you consider writing event material in this way, it can remove some of the fear factor. Most delegates will be satisfied with your normal product literature and a copy of the slides printed out as lecture notes with a space to add their own observations. If there is no-one in your organization with the time or the skill to write...