May 11, 2008
Dear Economist: When is the best time to give a presentation at a conference?
Dear Economist,
I have been invited to give a presentation at a conference. Naturally, I’d like to look as good as possible. I have been given some flexibility over length, topic, timing and so on. What advice can you give me, and is it best for me to open or close the proceedings?
Jeremy L, London
Dear Jeremy,
Anyone can tell you the obvious stuff: don’t use boring bullet-point slides and keep it simple. Obvious, but most people, at the expense of their audience, ignore this advice.
Let me instead focus on a less-obvious insight, discovered by the economist Lionel Page and his wife, the psychologist Katie Page. The Pages looked at years of results from talent contests such as X-Factor and American Idol, in which contestants perform and viewers vote as to who they’d like to see again.
The Pages were able to measure whether it was an advantage to appear first or last, or immediately after a flop or a show-stopper. Because most singers appeared several times, the Pages could take account of the fact that the show’s producers might deliberately open and close with strong performers. In effect, they looked at what happened to the same contestant when they appeared earlier or later.
The bottom line is that it’s OK to go first but better to go last. A partial explanation is that these acts are easier to remember. Obscurity doesn’t seem to attract you, so make sure you’re closing the show.
Questions to economist@ft.com
Better to go last? That’s absolutely terrible advice. I was recently the last speaker at a two day conference attended by about 300 people.
(1) Some people will have left for the airport to catch an early plane. (This can happen at the beginning of the meeting as well, but it’s less likely.)
(2) Many people in the audience will have had just too many presentations and will be presentation-drunk. Or maybe alcohol-drunk. Or maybe both.
(3) In my case, by the end of the day they were one speaker behind schedule. So, I actually began just as I should have ended — meaning more people left for the airport at the time the conference was originally supposed to end.
(4) If you speak early, you can socialize at the rest of the conference and get additional feedback / bask in the celebrity / get referred to by later speakers, etc. If you speak late, you get none of this.
Posted by: ZBicyclist | May 14th, 2008 at 5:19 am | Report this commentAgreed ZBicyclist, performing last might be OK on a reality TV show where the audience wants to see who wins, but showing a powerpoint to intoxicated audience members rushing to catch planes hardly offers an advantage.
Posted by: Michael Evangelidis | May 22nd, 2008 at 8:18 am | Report this comment