A Bunch of Good Ideas

How to Add a Little Wizbang to Your Presentation Wizbang is something that adds spice to your style, perks up your presentation and wakes up your audience.

It can be a prop, a story, a hook, an activity, a game or even a joke. It gets your audience involved and out of their seats. It reinforces your key message and makes your presentation memorable. 10 of my Favourite Wizbangers and how I use them.

1. Plain as a rock - Open by showing the audience a geode (looks like a
rock). Discuss how plain and rocklike it looks (it is fairly dull looking). Open the geode (these are cut at rock hound stores) and show how glorious and spectacular it is inside. It isn't always obvious what people around us have to offer until we look a little deeper.

2. Choose and Move - When you want to review a few facts with your group place two chart papers, one at each end of the room, with Yes and No, or True and False. You pose the question to the group; each person goes to the end of the room to match their answer. Keep playing until there is only one person left.

3. Personalized Websites - At the end of a workshop, when the participants know each other fairly well, I ask them to conclude by creating a website address for a partner. The site should illustrate something special and positive about that person and how they came to know him or her in the workshop. Some ideas www.chattygal.com, www.scientistwithoutacoat.com, www.foreveryoung.com , www.helpinghand.com. (these aren't real websites, I think)

4. Opening the Door - I ask small groups to come up with 5 jobs that didn't exist 15 years ago. Share the lists. This opens a discussion on how anything is possible, and the importance of staying open to change. To enhance this activity I use a crystal ball (glass fishing lure).

5. Cheese Stands Alone - I hand out pieces of a puzzle to the whole group or small groups to put together. The glitch is that one person is holding an extra piece that looks like it fits in the puzzle but it doesn't. This activity leads into a discussion about inclusion

6. Stuck On Me - I saw speaker, Polly Lee, use this technique in a Toastmaster's Contest in Vancouver. As she talked about the negative messages that were in her head, she stuck onto her body, one by one, cardboard signs that held negative words. I used this in a similar way to illustrate how we set limitations on ourselves. My signs had Velcro on one side and showed such words as too old, too inexperienced, too stupid, not wanted.

7. Weighed Down - I saw this at a retreat years ago, and unfortunately cannot give credit. The leader asked us to write a list of things we had left unfinished in our lives, anything from cleaning the bathroom cupboard to getting a divorce. Then we chose 8 of the items. At this point she gave out black balloons and told us to inflate them. But she warned us only to inflate each balloon to the size proportional to the problem; for example, a divorce would likely be bigger than a cupboard cleanout (but not necessarily). Then she asked us to tie them onto strings and loop the strings around our necks. She made us wear them for the next few hours. The key learning point? How unfinished business takes energy from us and robs us of freedom.

8. Rock of Ages - I saw a scientist open a presentation by passing around a rock that was thousands of years old. He talked about what was happening on earth when that rock was around and how the rock was still here all those years later. In that opening, he used that prop to reel us all in to the amazing history of rocks, and opened up our minds to listen to him. I try to use props like this to focus the group right from the very opening.

9. Name Ten Parts - For a lighthearted moment I suggest that the group tries an activity I did with a bunch of kids, to see if they can do it faster. I tell them I want them to name 10 parts of the human body that have three letters. Someone always offers "bum" up halfway into the activity, and I tell them I will reserve it if they don't get 10. The group can usually get about 8, but they cannot get 10 until they see the human body from a different perspective, from the inside and start adding parts like rib and gut. This activity makes them laugh, gets them to work together and shows them that there are turning points in learning.

10. Yours Truly - There is nothing like sharing a personal story with the group. You can always remember it because it is yours and it can be funny, warming or even alarming. Some of my best stories come from my file called "The First Time" - I got a kiss, had a job, lit my kitchen on fire, wore high heels, cooked for my mother in law, said I love you, went to high school, took the bus alone, got my hair permed. These stories are filled with exciting and disastrous attempts at life. I recommend you look at some of your "First Times".

Guidelines for using a Wizbanger
1. It must have a point that ties in with a key learning point.
2. Customize it to fit the group.
3. Make sure it is safe.
4. Don't give the learning point away too soon. Often it is more dynamic to let people come to their own connections.

Find out more about Wizbangers at www.wizbangers.ca