Golden Rules

1. Be clear about your message

This is your most important starting point. You want the medium to support and enhance the message, but as your project moves from initial concept through to implementation, it's easy to lose sight of your original goals.

Define your message first, and keep it clearly in view as you design your show. Only use sounds and visuals that directly support your message.

2. Know your audience

There's no virtue in producing a dazzling hi-tech show if it leaves your audience confused, dissatisfied, or bored. Although you may need to make some educated guesses, everything you can find out about your audience will pay rich dividends:

• How motivated are they? Are they genuinely seeking enlightenment, or are they just sheltering from the rain? Is your show primarily education, or entertainment?
• Will they see the whole show? If your presentation space is part of a larger exhibition, will people drift in and out? Might they miss the start?
• What about age and social mix - do you expect to have families? teens? retirees? children without their parents? Make some guesses about their attention span.
• Will you attract international visitors? What about a multilingual presentation?
• How much might they already know about the subject of your message?

3. Be realistic about your budget

There's an old saying - work expands to fill the available time, and this is certainly the case with all kinds of presentations. If it took twice as long to prepare, would your presentation become twice as good, and even if it did, would it really make any difference?

Conduct a thorough cost / benefit analysis - take a sober look at how important the presentation really is, and concentrate on those areas from which you expect measurable returns.

When working out your budget, you need to take into account the time and effort involved, as well as the cost of equipment, and fees you may pay to a presentation specialist.

Set a release date and stick to it. If you are making a presentation that can easily be revised (such as a Web site or information system), leave some features out of the first version, and concentrate on the bare essentials.