American Tongue

Presenting to win

A. In presenting to Win, Weissman hopes to teach presenters what he calls “media sensibility applied to the business community.” (xxviii) What do you suppose that he means by this, and how is it related to business presentation? Is he right in this statement? If you believe him to be right, how can a business professional approach presentation with “media sensibility”? What does this sensibility consist of?

I suppose that “media sensibility applied to the business community” implies the importance of visual support. Now everybody uses PowerPoint Program when they are presenting. Not only the narrative explanation but also the visual support which helps to catch and realize contents well is required. Consequently, it is pretty much related to business presentation.

I believe that Weissman is right in the statement. The visual let audience have a glance without complicate saying. Also, it is always effective method of appealing. As I am a presenter, I use the visuals a lot whenever they are needed. At the end of accounting class I took, for instance, I was assigned CEO of Intel Corporation. I put the world map which shows current state of affairs on each country and some pictures of new product will be released later on PowerPoint slides. Another member of my group assigned as CFO. He put brief version of Intel Corporation’s financial reports which highlighted some numbers. The statistics numbers and enumeration a lot of examples can be simplified by showing visuals.

I suppose that “media sensibility” is a sense and ability to see or choose visuals. A short but impressive presentation is required recently. This presentation trend is able to be applied to business world. For example, if I am working in financial department of the company and I have to prepare presentation for annual meeting. I believe most people in the annual meeting know the financial situation of company and even some statistics but if there are people who do not know about it clearly the visual support will be helpful for them. I will make some charts which can read easily such as pie chart, graph, bar chart, and so on, and insert them into PowerPoint slides. Introducing a new product can be another example. If I am a person who introduce a new product I will add some detailed pictures of product, sentences briefly indicate features, and even video shows the use in real life.

Media sensibility consists of the ability to determine which visual format is appropriate to express, the ability to make visual neat and clear, and the ability to determine amount of slides. With these abilities, presenter will make his or her presentation more effectively.

B. In Chapter 4, Weissman advises presenters to “[b]ecome the navigator for your audience.” In other words, he says, “Don’t make them think!” (both on 42) What is he really arguing here? Do you agree