Don’t be in the Dark

Recently I was the speaker for a large group in a Convention Center break-out room. When I arrived early to check everything out, the room was dark. Not because no one was in it — no, there were probably a couple hundred people there listening to a speaker. But they were sitting in the dusk. And the speaker was virtually in the dark at the front of the room. Now, the screen, oh yes, you could see the screen…

When that session broke up and I began my set-up, I asked several different people what could be done about the lighting. Every single one of them responded to me by saying, “The lights are turned down so the audience can see the screen.”

Aaugh! Let me pose this to you:

You’re an expert on something. You’ve been invited to speak to a group of hundreds of people about your expertise. It’s an opportunity for exposure, for credibility-building, for connecting with and relating to people about your subject matter. Given that, what’s more important? That your audience be able to see your PowerPoint slides? Or that they see you?

If you had no PowerPoint slides to show, would you stand in the front of a room in the dark?  When you’re sitting in an audience looking at these bright visuals on the screen, can you see the speaker at all, who often is simply silhouetted against the bright screen? When you attend an event or a program or a convention session, do you go because you can’t wait to see the PowerPoint slides?  Have you ever heard audience members exclaim before a presentation, “Man, I can’t wait to see this speaker’s visuals!”  Or afterwards, have you ever heard any of them say, “Wow, weren’t those PowerPoint slides really worth the time?”

No, no, no, no and no.  So why do speakers and venues do it in the dark?

One of my continuous refrains in my training business is, as a speaker you want the focus on you. So what if the screen is not quite as bright as it could be in a dark room? Trust me, with today’s bright lumen projectors, most screens are very visible in room with normal lighting. If you have good visuals (that’s another topic for another day!), you don’t need to turn the lights off or even down low. Your only concern is to make sure there are no spots or other lighting shining directly on the screen. If you’re speaking in a small- to medium-sized conference room, classroom or auditorium, you can probably take care of this yourself with a few tests of the light switches. In a larger facility that specializes in hosting speaking events, the staff should be able to work with you on this.

Other than the obvious difficulty created when lights shine right on the screen, I’ve never seen a problem with keeping normal lighting in the room. Remember, the objective is for the audience to see you.  And, don’t forget, it helps for you can see the audience.

Ironically, at this convention I was at recently, after I had to ask three or four people how I could get the lighting changed, my conference host ended up having to pay a convention employee to do it! That, of course, should not have been necessary. For a speaker to be in the light should not be an extra charge!