How Bob Marley saved a conference:
LATE in the afternoon at a conference I was MC’ing early this year, I noticed the audience energy waning and I saw a few sets of wavering, flickering eyes.
To be fair, the presenter had a monotone, he was relying on endless power-point slides and was not interacting with the audience. Put simply, there was zero energy and we still had two more presentations to go before day’s end.
As an MC I see it as my role to do whatever is required to keep the mood and energy as high as possible to help delegates get as much as they can out of their conference experience. Unfortunately, during the presentations there’s little that I can do. But between presentations the MC has a short opportunity to energise the room and to hand a focussed audience over to the incoming presenter. Enter Bob Marley. Once I’d thanked the previous speaker, I asked (as pre-planned) the AV operator to play Bob Marley’s “Get Up Stand Up” and then asked the audience to “get up, stand up” - which they dutifully did (conference audiences are generally compliant and quite happy to stand for a few seconds and stretch, have a quick chat, check their phone or quietly sing along to an old song).
Thirty seconds later, the audience sat back down, the energy in the room transformed and the next speaker received a far more attentive audience than one minute earlier.
Now there’s nothing innovative or revolutionary about this technique. I know that countless MC’s or speakers utilise similar techniques (the “stand and massage the shoulders of the person in front of you and now swap and return the favour” technique is an old favourite) - but I also know that this is often not the case and many conferences remain de-energised for days at a time.
A “have a 30 second chat with the person next to you” will do the trick, better still a “swap seats and sit next to a stranger” works wonders and helps networking. Song choice matters little. The 90’s classic “Jump Around” by House of Pain (YouTube it) is a winner as is the pop song du jour (although please, no more “Uptown Funk!!!)
Music @ Conferences = Energy = Engaged Delegates is the basic equation. So Get Up, Stand Up and improve conference engagement. Thanks Bob.