{"id":188449,"date":"2025-04-30T12:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/presenting-to-a-mixed-audience-three-tips\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T12:45:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T12:45:00","slug":"presenting-to-a-mixed-audience-three-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/en\/presenting-to-a-mixed-audience-three-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Presenting to a Mixed Audience: Three Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
“Marloes, I have a presentation coming up, but the audience is rather diverse. How do I best prepare for that?” A good question, as this situation arises frequently. With such a mixed audience, who exactly do you address? Three ways to help you with that.<\/strong><\/div>\r\n

1. Keep the beginning and end simple <\/h3>\n

The opening of your presentation is crucial. Anyone who doesn’t grasp what it’s about within two minutes will quickly lose the thread. With a mixed audience, this means it’s important to keep your first few minutes \u2014 as well as your summary and conclusion \u2014 very accessible. It doesn’t matter if the middle section is somewhat more technical and only reaches part of the audience. With a clear opening and ending, the rest of the room can at least follow the broad strokes of what you’re saying. <\/p>\n

2. Find the common denominator <\/h3>\n

Although your audience may consist of different groups of people with varying levels of knowledge, they all have one thing in common: they came to hear what you have to say. What do you think drew all these people in? What are they hoping to learn from you? More often than not, there’s a common denominator to be found \u2014 something everyone in the room shares with one another, and the reason they’re all there. Think about what would be interesting for everyone in the room to hear from you. Is it possible to shape your talk around that? <\/p>\n

3. Make sure you get what you need <\/h3>\n

A somewhat more self-serving, yet certainly effective, approach is to ask yourself plainly: what do I want to achieve with this presentation? Be completely honest with yourself. Perhaps you want to impress that group of professors in the audience? Or persuade a producer to develop a new product with you? Or are you hoping to secure some funding? All perfectly valid goals to set your course by.<\/p>\n

Directing your entire presentation solely at that small cluster in the audience is a little off-putting, but there’s nothing wrong with explicitly aiming a good portion of it at them. A useful tip here is to write down, quite literally and concretely, what you want to achieve. Can you then think of one very small step that can be taken directly during, or within a few minutes after, your presentation? This is what we call a call to action<\/em>. If you want more citations, for instance, people need to read your paper. But that’s not something they can do right there and then. A smaller step would be to display a QR code that lets them download your paper directly to their phone. Want to arrange a meeting with specific people? Don’t just say “drop me an email if you found my talk interesting” \u2014 that puts the ball in the other person’s court and requires them to compose a considered message. If you want to meet with someone, what’s the most straightforward call to action? For example: “If you have any feedback on my research, come and find me \u2014 I’ll be at the coffee machine during the break.” Or use a QR code linking to a Google form asking for contact details. “Leave your email address if you’re interested in talking further. I’ll give you a ring next week for a quick chat.”<\/p>\n

In short, make sure you’re asking for something very simple that costs the other person little time or effort. There’s nothing wrong with using such a direct request to target the people who are most relevant to you. You’re standing on a stage for a reason, so make the most of it! <\/p>\n

\n

Podcast: How to present Science <\/h3>\n

Looking for more presentation tips? Listen to the podcast How to Present Science<\/em> and discover many more techniques and examples from Marloes. Prefer a training or coaching session? Visit www.takethestage.nl<\/a><\/p>\n

Who is Marloes? <\/h3>\n\n

Marloes ten Kate has coached thousands of (international) speakers in communicating clearly and inspiringly. She draws on her experience as a science journalist in radio and television, as well as from theatresports, a form of improvisational theatre. She is the founder of Take the Stage<\/a>; a platform created specifically for scientists who want to become better presenters. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Marloes, I have a presentation coming up, but the audience is rather diverse. How do I best prepare for that?” A good question, as this situation arises frequently. With such a mixed audience, who exactly do you address? Three ways to help you with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":187411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[452],"tags":[535,537,463],"class_list":["post-188449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people-careers","tag-career","tag-partner-contribution","tag-science-policy-communication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c2w-memo.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}