During the last years I have visited several international conferences. Good agenda, good locations, interesting presentation titles. But what happened sometimes, already after two, three slides offered by a presenter, I got tired and bored. Not necessarily, because the presenters had nothing to tell, but simply due to the fact that the type of presentation and the content shown was very ecocentric. They were that much involved in their own tasks, that they forgot about their audience. They showed their expertise, but forgot to ‘sell’. This means it had nothing or only partly to do with my own work. I simply lost the ‘connection’ and motivation to listen. I did not feel involved and questioned or challenged in what I had in mind. The best outcome was often a few key messages around generic trends to take home which I could have learned also just by reading some good articles. Sometimes I started to take some notes, too, but I never looked at them later on. I did not really know what to do with them.

So, what? I asked myself which kind of presentations really were exciting and why. This is what I have learned from really impressive speakers: they

Well, knowing that these kind of presenters are going to talk I would stay there for hours and listen.

And by the way, I think these are always relevant ingredients when two different ‘worlds’ , eg. business people / social entrepreneurs meet. It is all about building bridges where both parties can walk on.