Last week, my company had a technical forum where employees come to present their work. This has been a major “stress point” of pretty much everyone involved. Why? Largely because the norm here is that we favor forms over substances.

KM Week Stage

The forum that was originally designed for knowledge sharing has become an event where everyone comes to “show off their trophy” and compete for whose trophy is the shiniest. Not fun. And I have been part of committing that sin for the last 4 years.

We got it all wrong. Presentation is supposed to be for the audience. Somewhere, somehow, somebody told me that there are three goals of a presentation: inform, educate, and entertain. Achieving all three is not easy. Inform is the easiest. Educate while not being pedantic and condescending is harder. Entertain is the hardest. But these goal posts remind me that:

It's not about you. It's about the audience. The audience doesn't give a damn about you. Dress well? Speak with a perfect accent? Take that ego away. Switching the role, how often do you care about those things when listening to someone else?


We all know the feeling of walking away from the talk and says “Damn, that was crazy (I learned something here)”. Or maybe feeling a bit smarter. Or simply entertained because you get that inside joke.

But those are the tricks. The rule number zero is: You must have something worth sharing. If your substance is good, you win half the battle. If it is not, no amount of tricks will do. Empty sack cannot stand upright.

This year, I did it a bit differently. Here’s what I wrote and kept in my pocket before presenting:

KM Week Notes

Life can be a play and you can enjoy it.

Of course, I did not win any award. I didn’t fit the template the committee was looking for. But I think I won the hearts and minds of some of the audience. Someone came and told me “It was poetic”, “I can listen to your talk every year then”, “It was so you” (I hope that’s a compliment!), “I walked all the way here just to hear you for 15 minutes - and I was not disappointed.” I’m sure they probably forget 95% of what I presented. But impression survived - sometimes even without a label.