3 Presentation Formats Attendees Will Love

December 18, 2024

These three presentation formats will engage attendees and foster learning — though not all speakers will want to go there.

While everyone is comfortable with the traditional presentation model of having an expert on stage lecturing for a set length of time before a passive audience, today’s audiences are looking for something a little more engaging. While these three presentation models are more demanding for the speaker than just reading from prepared slides, they definitely will shake things up and get the audience engaging more — and learning more — in the sessions.

Ask Me Anything. The “ask me anything,” or AMA, format — which is a bit like the Q&A usually held in the last few minutes only it makes up the entirety of the session — is a good fit to replace the traditional lecture when you have a presenter who really does have a lot of knowledge to impart but don’t want to go the traditional lecture route. Because it puts the content of the meeting into the hands of attendees, it’s best to get them thinking ahead of time about the topic and what specifically they want to learn from the expert. When it’s time for the session to take place, the expert asks the audience to ask their questions, which she/he will answer and go back and forth with the audience until that question is fully answered. Then everyone moves on to the next question until they run out of time or questions, whichever comes first.

Pecha Kucha. While AMA can be challenging for speakers because they have to be ready to answer questions as they pop up rather than rely on prepared slides, Pecha Kucha — a Japanese storytelling format that became popular in the early 2000s — lets the speaker use prepared slides. The catch is that they are limited to 20 slides, which they have to get through in 20 seconds per slide. This format works best for highly niched subjects, for obvious reasons, but it can be a boon when you want to brainstorm ideas and solutions in a fun, interactive session. Instead of having one expert talk exhaustively on a topic, using a Pecha Kucha format you can bring on a series of experts, each of whom home in on a targeted aspect of the topic, in a series that’s fast-moving, fun and interactive. Plus, the audience will have fun watching the creative ways the speakers address their topic niches to keep within the constraints of the format.

Power Talk. If AMA and Pecha Kucha had a baby, it might look a bit like the Power Talk format. As with AMA, the speaker has to answer questions curated from the audience, though in this format it’s generally a moderator who poses the questions, and the questions are limited to just 10 per session. Like Pecha Kucha, the speaker has a very limited time — one minute — to address each point, though in this case, the question comes from the moderator instead of from the speaker-created slides. In fact, with the Power Talk format, there are no slides allowed, though a visible countdown timer can add a little Pecha Kucha-like drama as the audience sees how the speaker goes about condensing their answers in such a short period of time. While speakers may not always love the challenge, audiences do love the rapid pace and constantly changing topics this high-energy format provides.