Presenting to Teens such as yourselves about a subject they probably don't care about

Okay, here's one for you guys, next week I've been tasked with doing a presentation to my old school, well, part of it. The audience is a count of about 100 14/15 year olds on each of the two days, for as much time as I want up to about 50 minutes. All fine and dandy, except when the presentation I'll be doing to them is probably going to be quite uninteresting to them. Background info, they just did a 2 month project on Business Enterprise in their ICT lessons, they had to come up with a new product, research, develop, etc, and come up with something presentable, they even had to go into the business side of things and work out investments they want, turnover, costs, etc. I came back in to school to judge the finals of this project, and afterwards my old teacher, who is actually the head of ICT and Business Studies as well, tasked me with creating my own presentation if I wish to on my own, already running business, to as he put it "show them how it's done in the real world". Of course I took up this challenge since I'm usually quite a fan of public speaking on a topic I'm heavily interested in.

My business in question is Web Design and Systems Services (at least, that's what my business card says), which really isn't the most interesting topic for these guys. I've tried to keep it interesting, my intro is quite an interesting one, based on Johnny Long's intro but more personal to me. After that, I start going on to briefly run over what the business does, and our turnover, etc, and impress them with nice big numbers, then a bit on 'hacking' in a very broad sense of the term. Now I'm stuck for ideas, I mean, I could start going into a waffle about some great businessman who started from nothing and gained everything (e.g. Bill Gates) but I really can't see them enjoying that for long. If I had enough time I could have started going on about New User Interface and how the way we interact with things is changing, but until I actually have an iPhone 4 and I build my multi-touch table I can't really dabble with that (saving that presentation for next year, since I'll be bringing that table back to the school, I have this whole idea in the back of my head involving audience interaction and such). On a side note, gotta make sure I get iDemo on an iPhone for that, I hear it's pretty good over USB, so I could totally use it in that second presentation next year.

So, any pointers, suggestions, etc, about what I could do for these guys that may make my presentation a bit more interesting, coming from relatively normal teens? Like I said I have up to 50 minutes, so I can go for 5, 20, or even the full 50 minutes. Though God help me if I manage that. And yeah, I don't have to stay directly on the topic of my business, I can go into other areas such as the aforementioned stuff about NUI, constantly evolving technology, etc. Normally I'm great at presentations, but I aim them far too much at an older, or at least 'geekier' demographic, hence why I'm trying to get some ideas from teens who aren't as unusually minded as I am, at least as normal as this community can be...

And yes, I do have a video from Monty Python of a Trojan Horse Rabbit. And for kicks, let's make the title "Ben Woodford on 'Web 3.0 or: how I learned to stop worrying and took over the internet.'".

tl;dr: Doing a presentation on a real business, and some other neat techie things, to 14/15 year olds next week, need some ideas from 'normal' teenagers on how I could keep them interested.

Well, in my freshman year, we had a massive amount of presentations that usually dragged on through my entire 45-50 minute 1st period. Usually, they tend to stay right on these subjects, such as shoving "Don't do drugs" down our throats twice every month or so. Now, i'm one who's more into technology and the other stuff like that anyways. Most people my age are interested in that stuff, or at least the people I know. Anyways, good luck on your presentation, Cue.

At the risk of making things sound too simple, you could use analogies to illustrate how stuff works. There might not be any good analogies out there for you, and it might make things simpler than you'd like, simpler things are easier to understand. Audiences are interested in things they understand, so simple could be good.

Seriously though? Don't go for the full 50 minutes. You'd be lucky if they stay under control for that long.

You could try visual aids of some sort...give out things they could do with a cool website. Something that they'll have to brag with. Anything that has to do with recreation or having something to brag about could work.

I also agree with B.Zero4 on the nearly an hour thing. Unless you constantly use attention grabbers, it'll get really loud, either with scattered conversation, or snoring. You can hope that the class they get out of was very boring, but don't count too much on it.

Admit within the first 5 sentences that you know they likely don't care.

Chaos Knux said:

Admit within the first 5 sentences that you know they likely don't care.

Click to expand...

That will annoy the ones who might actually care, so I'd rather not.

SpiritCrusher said:

That will annoy the ones who might actually care, so I'd rather not.

Click to expand...

Sure would annot me. I actually pay attention in my class, unlike the other 3/4 of them

Cue is trying to get everyone's attention. Of course, there are people that will pay attention for their own good. But most people would just ignore or get bored.

I think 50 minutes is a bit overboard. I know tons of people that can't even stand presentations that are 5 minutes long.

1.Don't look bored yourself - Keep a nice expression, get some verbal movement going. Look happy and interested yourself.
2.If its going to be long, maybe give some class interaction. That'll give the class a thing to do instead of sitting there listening to some guy talking.

There's no good way of doing it.

Seriously.

Web Design and Systems Services eh?
Maybe you could do something with websites like youtube and newgrounds, such as a interview on how their Web designs and such affected their success and, in a way, their business? Keep on with that "dazzle them with big numbers", only make sure those numbers are monetary. Thats what I think o3o

The way I see it, you've got to put emphasis on what is most relevant to your audience's lives. Explain how it all ties into the sites they love. And does it have to be 50 minutes? I probably wouldn't care if I was watching, but that's just me. A 50-minute presentation is just begging for half of the kids to die of boredom.

Of course, I'm not the ideal person to ask. I'm eighteen, and this is being directed towards 14/15-year-olds.

As for me, I would totally attend that assembly, but for those who don't care, try making references about current music stars or TV stars and such. Even though it might sound dreadful to you, I'm pretty sure the majority of the people attending that would be interested.
Or you can go Zero Effort on them. *Shot*

You could start by talking about how Facebook, Twitter etc. all run on the technology you're talking about. That should pull them in. And whatever you do, try not to get into how tedious it can get. You'll get glazed-over eyes really fast.

I wouldn't, of course, take the full 50 minutes, it was just an example. As my contact said, "take their age and add 10 minutes, that's how long you'll be able to keep it".

Speaking from personal experience, an engaging public speaker can pull my interest even into subjects I couldn't care less about. However, I am probably a better listener than your average teen.

All the same, if you're passionate about the subject then your own interest will make up for what they lack. I had the fortunate experience of taking a Sociology class (a boring gen-ed requirement, right?) and ending up with a really good speaker. It ended up being one of my favorite classes.

Just be careful how much you try to dumb your speech down for them. You might lose interest in your own speech, and if you lose interest you cannot expect them to care. Worse yet, if your manner lets out that you are talking about something that they "wouldn't care about or understand", you may come off as condescending, which is absolutely the worst thing you can do in a speech.

Well...

After taking into account all the feedback, I've got a 74 slide powerpoint with 2 video clips, a lot of images and quite a few pop culture references. This should be rather interesting.

Thanks guys, I'll let you know how it turns out.

Well... Speaking AS someone in that age range I should tell you that as soon as people see that it is 74 slides they are going to loose interest, I wouldn't but knowing the other people in my class, yeah. The best thing to keep INTEREST is to show many funny or amazing videos with many colors.... colors ... ANYWAY if you want to go the other way then just stick to your plan, I mean the people who that are willing to listen are the ones who have an interest in the subject and in the end, it will only help them anyway.

Don't rely too heavily on the (Powerpoint) presentation. One of my pet peeves is public speakers who make the main part of the speech the (Powerpoint) presentation rather than their speech. Also, 74 slides IS a lot, hope you're prepared for it.

I've run through it a fair few times, and believe you me, it's not reliant on the powerpoint that much, it's just an aid that helps the audience understand what I'm saying, mainly images really.

Timed it, too, 23 minutes rehearsed.

23 minutes is a good length. I'm sure students have had to sit through worse.