So imagine you’re at a conference and a speaker is just bombing it. Maybe they don’t know their audience. Maybe they aren’t covering the topic well. Maybe they aren’t being responsive.
Whatever the reason, they suck.
You also have a Twitter account and maybe a few hundred or few thousand followers. Do you say what is on your mind to those people (and the world) or do you hold back?
The new challenges in speaking
The first mistake? Saying anything at all.
I saw quite a few tweets recently from the 2010 Illinois Annual Conference and Expo that were particularly brutal to a speaker. It felt like the person was getting piled on.
The comments may have been true. At least from the people who were actually there, it seemed the sentiment was genuine frustration.
I felt compelled to chime in. I said I would’ve waited until the end to approach the speaker and the organizers about the session. I wouldn’t hold back any punches but I wouldn’t tweet them either.
I did this with a few things in mind. Knowing that I’ve sat through bad presentations and fumed. Knowing that I’ve bombed on a speaking engagement and felt really terrible about it. Knowing I prepared for one thing only to have to present another at a last minute and felt frustrated. Knowing I’ve gotten bad info from organizers or unruly audience members and felt betrayed and thrown under a bus.
Most of the time, it is a combination of a few factors that lead to a bad speaking experience. Yet, if someone who were prominent were to tweet out that they hated my presentation and thought I bombed, it is only my reputation that suffers. I (very selfishly) worried for my own sake and the sake of anyone who got on the wrong side of a speaking engagement in this new norm.
What do we say? What do we hold back?
Does that make me a bad speaker? Does that mean I can’t take the heat? Probably.
All I know is what I would have appreciated in this case would have been the benefit of the doubt and the opportunity to explain before getting assailed in a very public way.
But people also want instant feedback, instant access to analysis and above all, absolute transparency. That’s why I pointed people to the Twitter hashtag for the event and why I was following off and on for the day. Yet when I saw those very negative tweets, I started thinking about why I had such an immediate reaction to the way the pulse of this particular session was delivered to me, the outsider. It’s not an easy line to draw in the sand.
Is there value to everyone involved in holding back the harshest criticism for a one on one conversation with an organizer or speaker? Is it better to tweet it out so that more people can be aware of the mistakes being made? Should we expect all speakers to have a thick enough skin to not only deal with the reactions of those in the room but those thousands of miles away with no direct connection to the event (sometimes numbering in the thousands)?
Your turn
I’d love to get your take on this. Where is the line? Should there be a line? Are some things left better unsaid on Twitter? What should speakers, conference organizers and PR folks do to prepare for those situations?