I had a powerfully painful reminder recently of how important room/audience control is, one I'm going to learn from; you can too.

I present information sessions on a program we present regularly. Session is for people to ask questions, view a short video, etc. We want to sign people up for the $300 program at that info session, so it better be good.

Catch was, with this recent episode, the place, the room, was not our usual one, and I didn't know what it was going to be like. That was the first big blunder. I was just going to have to wing it. Since I've been doing this for a while, I was confident I could make it work.
Wrong. Totally, 100 percent wrong.

The room was not mine alone; it was big enough by far, but in two far corners, there were other small activities going on. Including conversations, with noise, laughter. And in another close-by room, a lot of noise. Ouch.

Chairs surrounded a long table for my audience members, set so they could view the video. That was fine, because no would could sit way in the back of the room, which Bob Sommers so correctly warns about; Bob knows how to avoid letting shy sitters have their way. I didn't have that problem, but there was no firm deadline, as in, now the audience is seated, the presentation will begin. Instead, people drifted in after the start, which is always a big distraction. Another ouch.

This also squashed my preferred way of meeting people, which is to greet them as they arrive, and absolutely learn their name — nothing is more important. No, we didn't have name tags on folks, either.

The room lights could only be dimmed so far, as the room had other activities, so the lighting was bad for the video. And of course the sound on the video also suffered, as we had noise.

The question and answer stunk, with noise, and my lacking audience members' names. I just looked at those who had their hands up, and said, "Yes?" It makes a massive difference when as the speaker you can say, "Tony, you have a question?" That really matters to — and impresses — people, when you show you've taken the time and effort to remember their name, especially when you want to sign them up for a $300 program.

A woman was disappointed this program was not offered on her island, and she went way overboard on the whole subject, took up our precious time griping about it. Another was just bad luck: two folks used a couple of words we have a policy of not using. They had some knowledge of the program, and were actually trying to be helpful, but there's solid reasons why we'd prefer these particular words aren't used. They used them.

This wasn't all that went wrong. The session went bad before it started, because almost everything was an unknown. Then it just spiraled downward into Murphy's Law Hell — whatever could happen to make it worse, happened. One person ended up signing up.

A well known speaker tells a funny story of being bombarded by dinner rolls at a talk he gave early in his career, as people in the audience were drunk, and the entire scene ended in disaster. Ever since he has had in his speaking agreements the clause that he won't speak where alcohol is served. And he won't.

And after my latest speaking fiasco, I will never again agree to speak anywhere without a reasonably solid idea of how things in that room are going to be. Anything short of that is inviting chaos, as Mr. Murphy knows so well.

Fantastic post. You're absolutely right about "shared" rooms. Just a little bit too much noise from any corner of the room is too much. The last JavaGym we did is another great example.

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Great example of how we need to know our speaking environment in order to ensure success. This is also a good reminder for anyone new to public speaking that even those of us with a lot of experience can forget the ground rules and there are consequesnces. So, if you are new to public speaking and it doesn't go perfectly...don't sweat it. Try again and learn from the experience.
What was it Jim Rohn always said ...(I'm paraphrasing here) "That's why they call them fundamentals, because they're fundamental".
Thanks for reminding us all of one of the fundamentals for public speaking success: know your environment before you arrive and set it up for success.

Hi Ellen:
I'm really enjoying your blog on public speaking. I would like to encourage everyone to check it out at Talking Points

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