Planning a professional dinner meeting? Use these helpful hints for creating a memorable presentation.
Dinner meetings are becoming increasingly popular in industries throughout the U.S. Until recently, these intimate educational sessions were primarily used by pharmaceutical reps in search of uninterrupted time with busy physicians, but today, more and more executives are taking part in educational dinner meetings.
Typically an intimate gathering, a dinner meeting may include anywhere from half a dozen to twenty or so attendees. Because restaurants tend to be dimly lit, it pays to bring an LCD projector rental to ensure that all participants can see and hear the presentation clearly.
Projector123.com rents high-lumen LCD projectors for this very purpose. For as little as $99, you can reserve a professional quality projector rental and be up and running in no time. We’ll deliver to the exact location you specify (hotel, business, private address, restaurant, etc.) one day before your event to ensure that you have the equipment you need when you need it.
Each projector rental includes a quickstart setup guide, 24/7 technical assistance whenever you need it, and return shipping.
Whether you’re a drug rep presenting new drug statistics, or a marketing professional presenting sales data, a rental projector can assist you in using vivid images and demonstrative charts to clarify your points and help you get the sales.
Oh and one final yet important tip — remember to snack before you get there. You’ll be so busy networking before and during dinner (and addressing questions and comments after the meal) that you may not have time to eat! Additionally, even the finest restaurants are often willing to make you a to-go box when you include yourself in the final head count.
Order your rental projector today from Projector123.com — we’ll help you in selecting the most optimal unit for your location and group size. Click here to get started.
December 29th, 2009
Integrating social media, especially Twitter, is a great way to enhance audience participation at a panel or conference. It mitigates live feedback, additional engagement — and let’s face it — it just looks impressive to project a screen full of audience tweets while panelists and pundits jabber away.
But the main problem is moderation. If you’re trying to put on a professional event, you can’t risk projecting offensive or radical tweets in front of your audience or behind your panelists. A literally “live feed” of tweets could include such content, especially since anyone on Twitter can contribute their opinions (if they have your hashtag). Vetting audience tweets can also prevent a vocal minority from dominating the discussion on your screens.
The most important element is establishing one or a few “hashtags” which will help classify tweets that are unique to your event. For instance, we might tell our audience to tag their tweets with #proj123. People who tweet about us would add that tag to the end of their messages so that everyone can distinguish those from the millions of tweets that are published every minute.
When we project tweets, we’ll only display those with the hashtag — but we still want to moderate even those. There are three prominent software options that allow live moderation at events like panels and conferences. Here’s a rundown:
Paratweet
Paratweet is designed specifically for conferences and panels — and specifically for simple moderation. A moderator can just click “yes” or “no” next to a live stream of tweets and the good ones will be instantly published to a bold, easy-to-read display. It’s simple and gives you full control. However, if you’re moderating hundreds of tweets per minute, it could get extremely daunting to manually approve each and every tweet.
Unfortunately, Paratweet isn’t free. It’s $80 per month — which isn’t bad, especially since that’ll easily cover a multiple-day conference. For $140 per month, you can operate up to three simultaneous events.
Wiffiti
LocalModa is famous for creating custom digital billboards that display everything from Tweets to text messages and Wiffiti is their publicly-available web app that does roughly the same thing. Wiffiti has tons of functionality beyond just Tweets — it’ll include Flickr images and text messages as well.
But it’s greatest virtue is “auto-moderation.” You can select from three levels: “rated G”, “rated R” or “all messages.” This is great if you don’t have the extra manpower to devote one person to moderating tweets. However, Wiffiti doesn’t allow manual moderation unless you contact them (which probably means it’ll cost you).
Twubs
Like Paratweet, the Twubs Conference Suite is designed specifically for panels and conferences. Twubs bills itself as a start-up company all about hashtags, so their conference package is just one part of their operation. The package includes moderation options and a few other perks like live audio/video streaming and events scheduling via Twitter. You can even embed your moderated Twitter feed online.
Their moderation workflow is more like it is in live television. You can set a time delay for live tweets that gives you a short window to remove unwanted content. If you’re moderating a large number of tweets, this process is easier than manually approving each message in the live stream (like you would with Paratweet).
Since their tools are in beta, Twubs is free. But you’ll have to contact their team about your event in advance — so it might not be the most reliable option.
Screen image at the top of this post used through a Creative Commons 2.0 license courtesy of Flickr user “andyp uk”.
August 14th, 2009
We found this great presentation planning checklist at mindtools.com
You can visit the original post here.
Enjoy and be sure to post your feedback!
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Presentation Planning Checklist
This presentation checklist will help you deliver successful presentation. This is adapted in part from Business Communications: A Cultural and Strategic Approach by Michael J. Rouse and Sandra Rouse.
Presentation:
* Does your introduction grab participant’s attention and explain your objectives?
* Do you follow this by clearly defining the points of the presentation?
* Are these main points in logical sequence?
* Do these flow well?
* Do the main points need support from visual aids?
* Does your closing summarize the presentation clearly and concisely?
* Is the conclusion strong?
* Have your tied the conclusion to the introduction?
Delivery:
* Are you knowledgeable about the topic covered in your presentation?
* Do you have your notes in order?
* Where and how will you present (indoors, outdoors, standing, sitting, etc.)?
* Have you visited the presentation site?
* Have you checked your visual aids to ensure they are working and you know how to use them?
Appearance:
* Make sure you are dressed and groomed appropriately and in keeping with the audience’s expectations.
* Practice your speech standing (or sitting, if applicable), paying close attention to your body language, even your posture, both of which will be assessed by the audience.
Visual Aids:
* Are the visual aids easy to read and easy to understand?
* Are they tied into the points you are trying to communicate?
* Can they be easily seen from all areas of the room?
Be sure to rent your projector from Projector123.com to ensure the highest quality visual presentation at affordable prices. Rent a projector today!
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