Audiences

For me, what makes or breaks a presentation I give is whether I can find a friendly face in the audience to which I can look at. For my Phd defence, my audience had the following specimens (the room was divided in two, with the right-hand side containing the yawner, and the left, everybody else; committee was distributed evenly)

• The Committee: front rows, use sparingly, limited interest, but still, most alert. Engage sparingly to avoid annoyance.


• The Yawner: could not contain his yawns; caught him yawning twice and as such I never looked in his direction again (too bad he was sitting next to Marian and as such I have no recollection of Marian during my talk.


• The Frowner: right behind the last member of the committee, this one would frown deeply (not helped by her dry forehead skin) in three different ways: (a) I have no idea what you are talking about; (b) hm ... is it so? ; (c) WTF?!?!?!!?!! I found her deeply disturbing but still I continued to look in her general direction because she was better than the yawner. Also, she was a constant in the presentation, as sometimes I would look at her to make sure that yes, she was still frowning.


• The Stoned: to the bone. This one was Doris, who looked like she would be zonking out on me any minute now.


• The Positive: Always giving me a thumbs up whenever I looked his way. Used sparingly for re-assurance.


• The Intellectual: [Daffodil] Looking like she understood perfectly what I was saying - helped by the specs!