The Presentation Gallery Walk allows people to explore the slides in their own pace, oversee the full storyline and zoom in on the parts of the presentation that are not clear to them. It can either be used to review a presentation or to present a final presentation.Idea speed dating is a great way for a group to quickly come up with many ideas, and to have people build off of other’s ideas. It accomplishes three key things: it generates many different ideas, it helps build on and select directions for the best ideas and helps building a connection between participants. Finally, the end result is often a beautiful, rich, colourful mural of thoughts that can be used as inspiration throughout events now and in the future.
This all makes idea speed dating a very powerful and useful exercise during live or remote events with teams.
- Purpose of this session. This will fall into two key areas: you’re probably are either working on a storyline and inviting them to give feedback and help make it better (where your invitation will be mainly about giving them te right information to help them help you) or you want to inform them about something (where your invitation will mainly focus on inviting them to look at the slides and ask for clarification later).
- Explain why you are doing this (rather than a normal PowerPoint sequence presentation on a screen).
- Make clear what you are asking from the participants. In case you are looking for feedback, make clear what the goal and the audience of your presentation is (“we are working on a new presentation to present our organisation to potential clients during a sales pitch” or “we are working on several slides to present or 2025 plans to the board”). In case you want to inform the audience, mainly ask them to walk through the storyline and focus on the things they do not understand.
Tailor your invitation to what is needed in that exact moment.
Depending on the purpose of the session and the status of your presentation (e.g. is it final, or work in progress), you might want to take a moment to quickly explain the key storyline and/or point out specific things to look for when doing the gallery walk.
In case your wall space is limited (or you just have too much slides), consider hanging the slides in rows below each other.
- Make sure the slides are hanged on the wall before the meeting.
- Make sure the space is arranged in such a way that allows participants to walk past and look at the slides as they were in a gallery.
- Explain the purpose of the excercise.
- Depending on the purpose of the excercise, take little time to explain the storyline and/or slides.
- Allow participants 10-15 minutes to browse the presentation gallery. You can either ask them to take notes or use post-its to write down their questions or comments.
- Discuss take-outs or questions collectively, ask people to hang their post-its per slide or use a structure like 1-2-4-all to discuss.
- Synthesize the outcomes and explain the next steps (update of the presentation, follow up on questions raised, etc.)
Make sure people are able to see each and every slide when discussing.
Everyone is allowed to browse the space, browse the gallery and to comment.
- Although A4 sizes slides might work in small groups, A3 (or bigger) truly make a difference and are way easier to read.
- Best to hang the slides on the wall before the meeting to avoid wasting time hanging slides in the meeting.
In November 2015, I almost died of a kidney rupture and a lung infection. It was an experience that changed my outlook on life profoundly. It was time to spend my time more wisely. First of all, I decided to make as many beautiful memories as possible. Secondly, I decided to not accept the horrible status quo of suboptimal relationships between companies and people anymore. Not as a consumer myself and certainly not as a professional. I started doing less meetings and more doings. Less powerpoints, more doing stuff. And even more than before, I obsessed about changing companies to be less about ads and more about acts – for both their customers and their colleagues. Impact is about doing. Start doing more.