Remote Demos: Tell Your Audience to Go Full Screen

Far too often presenters start their web-delivered demos by simply asking, “Can you see my screen?”  If the answer is anything other than a negative, the presenter dives in and starts talking and clicking – with absolutely no idea what the audience is actually seeing.  Here are a few quick tips to improve delivery:

1. Make sure your audience has gone full screen. 

In WebEx, GoToMeeting, Zoom and other tools, the default audience view is generally a sub-region of their screen – often about 2/3 or ¾ of the full screen.  The result?  Your software will be hard to see (sometimes very hard to see!).  So, either force your audience into full screen view (some tools have a capability that does this) or simply instruct your audience to choose “Enter Full Screen” on their own (you’ll likely have to walk them through this…).

2. Next, confirm they are seeing what you want them to see.

Move your mouse to the top-left corner and ask, “Can you see my mouse in the top-left corner?”  Get a verbal “yes” before moving on.  Then move your mouse to the bottom-right corner and ask again, “Can you see my mouse now in the bottom right corner?”  Get a verbal confirmation, again.

You’ve just confirmed they can see the same screen real estate you expect them to be seeing – and you’ve gently begun to train them to interact. 

3. Now, check the latency – the delay.

Tell your audience, “I’m going to say, ‘3, 2, 1, click’ and then let me know when you see the next slide (in PowerPoint, for example).  Do it, and then count the seconds before they respond.  That will give you the current latency and enable you to modulate your delivery accordingly.  Note:  you may need to do this twice…

That’s three simple tips to improve delivery.  There are several more, of course, but if you simply do these three you’ll be way ahead of the game…!