If You Have the Attention Span of a Goldfish, Can We Waste Hours of Your Time?

“I have no attention span,” says singer Carrie Underwood. “I get bored so fast.”

All of us do, these days. So, getting and keeping your attention matters. And keeping you engaged is harder than ever.

Every post-conference survey tells us that many attendees are too busy to attend conference sessions.

And a wealth of research says that old linear formats do not work with the business professionals who dominate the PTC Annual Conference and business in general. We have to move faster because you move faster.

“We’ve all got ADD now, short attention span and all that,” says actor Hugh Grant.

Ninety percent of millennial business professionals, 85 percent of Gen Xers, and 82 percent of baby boomers report they “shifted their focus away” from the speaker during the most recent presentation they saw live. It gets worse. It is not true that attention spans are just eight seconds among millennials, but the direction is right.

• 55 percent of professionals say you must tell a great story to get their attention
• 95 percent of professionals multitask during meetings
• Professionals in their 30s and 40s decide in eight seconds whether content is relevant
• Millennials expect ads to last only six seconds
• Content for apps and web is fast-paced, so people are accustomed to shorter content

No one has time for what isn’t relevant, convenient, or compelling.

That is why the new PTC HUB Lightning Talks are important. The Lightning Talks are the biggest change in content format PTC has launched in decades, and they are designed to:

• Bring content to where you are
• Give you content that is a snack you can fit in between other meetings
• Focus on strong storylines with a single point
• Fit the attention span you have at a busy event
• Showcase some of the best content happening at the conference
• Keep it simple, because simple, clear content will always win

There’s more. The Lightning Talks are open to members of the general public and not restricted to conference attendees. We are trying to:

• Expose PTC, its members, mission, and content to the wider public
• Show the relevance of member competencies to a vast audience
• Potentially create extensive media engagement with PTC and its members

Centrally located inside the PTC HUB, the Lightning Talks will allow you to grab 10-minutes of information you care about without disrupting the rest of your day. The format virtually forces speakers to focus on a single theme, getting right to the point, all “bottom line,” “what does it mean?” and “why do I care?”

You do not live as people did 40 years ago. To remain relevant, PTC’s content has to evolve with you, and that is what the PTC HUB Lightning Talks are all about.

Authored by →

Gary Kim