The actionable information and inspiration the attendees desire will be missing, while speakers try to prove they uber-intelligent on their topic. There will be little preparation and most will not be audience focused. Yep, they will range from average to awful in their presentation skills. However, too many of those who will take the stage at this event (and other events all over the world) will suck. If you going to speak at South by Southwest (SXSW) in March 2014 there is plenty of time to make sure you are prepared to deliver a good presentation. but just because someone is smart, or has done something cool, it does not mean they are engaging speakers. Most are okay, as they are smart people with interesting information. Nobody wants to flop, but my experience in attending SXSW for nearly a decade (I missed last year) is that more of the talks are "bad" than are "good". Soon the tech and marketing worlds will come to Austin, Texas for the SXSW Interactive 2014 and there will be thousands of presentations. While not all speakers need to be professional presenters, we should not assume everyone is comfortable on stage. Professional speaker Scott McKain did a great job on his blog of explaining how and why this event failed with his post " This is why you hire a professional" (and much of that responsibility fell to the event organizer, Samsung, who selected Bay). The presentation (a product launch) flopped. The Samsung executive who shared the stage with him was at a loss. The teleprompter failed and he could not express what inspires his own ideas, and he froze. Hollywood director Michael Bay infamously failed in his presentation for Samsung at CES.
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