Using Visual Aids

Mark had been asked to give a 5 minute talk on one of the company’s products, to a group of new employees as part of their induction course. Aware that even a 5 minute talk requires careful preparation, he had been hard at work, on and off all week, writing his notes and getting his material together and now he was as confident as you can be when you have to stand on your feet and keep the show going on your own, even for five minutes. His subject was ‘the nose-cone of a satellite’- well, I think it was, but then I can’t really remember, because for the next 5 minutes we, the audience, worked extremely hard. In the space of the next 5 minutes, as well as talking at breakneck speed, he showed us eight overhead projector transparencies all beautifully drawn in minute detail (which we couldn’t have seen from the back of the room, even if he had given us time to look at them); he also directed our attention to two wall posters, both of which looked, from where I was sitting, like aerial views of London taken from the moon; and while all this was going on he circulated six photographs which we were expected to pass round the room.