To All Communi-Creators:
Whenever a project is initiated, or a product created, a Roadmap is developed to assure all involved know where things are going, and how the team is going to get there. The Roadmap outlines key deliverables, tasks or events over a period of time and serves as an effective means to assure the ultimate objectives are met.
This concept is applicable to performances, especially performances by groups. A group performance is all too often a collection of individual presentations mashed into a single session. Group presentations are more effective when they are one homogenous performance being delivered by multiple persons.
Consider . . .
I recently sat through a group presentation at a community function and it was pretty apparent, pretty quickly, that each speaker had developed their section of the presentation in the privacy of their own office, without discussion or consultation with other team members. I would go so far as to presume this was the very first time each of them was even seeing what the others had developed.
As one would expect the presentation was a bit disjointed, often redundant, totally unpolished and ultimately failed to deliver the intended message successfully. At times speakers actually seemed surprized by what their co-presenters had included, and at one particularly stressful point there was conflicting data presented.
Not an impressive showing.
Now suppose, instead of everyone working in a vacuum on their own super-secret projects some time had been spent developing a "Presentation Roadmap," or a clear outline of what needed to be covered, and in what order, so that the core message could be delivered effectively. From this document individual sections could have been assigned and all would know what was being said before them, after them and by them. When developing this document collective decisions about aesthetcs and style could have been made. Ultimately, a cohesive presentation would have emerged as everyone involved was working from the same page - literally.
A little planning can go a long way in assuring group presentations are effective, while individuals working in isolation rarely create a cohesive product.
THE POINT: When working in a group - know where you're going and get there together, your audience will appreciate it.
