This is BS: “You’re Not Paying Attention!”

Watching a conference event from the back of a 300-person room last week, I noticed a number of people on their laptops during a panel. Some of the laptop-ers were on Tweetdeck, some were in Outlook/Mail, and a handful were clearly working on client projects—I saw a “coupla two, tree” PowerPoint decks being built.

All of which prompted me to send this tweet:

Do you present to groups? #youknowyouregood if no one’s on their laptops!

I got this response from Sarah White:

@Seiden could be a generational thing – the more engaging, the more i want to remember (via tweet/notes) exactly what they say #geny

(Sarah, nice headshots, btw.)

Later that afternoon, I did 5 back-to-back breakout sessions. Now, granted, breakout sessions are more intimate than plenary sessions—I get that—but still, I thought it would be interesting to do an experiment:

Could I get everyone who comes in with a laptop to forget about it—could I capture their attention enough to keep the room free of that clickety-click sound?

Over the course of 5 sessions, there were about 12 laptops or so. Only one stayed open and operational during my presentation… the others were either closed or put in the “half-mast” position (with the screen partly down).

Score!

Of course, me being me, that made me realize something else, too: quite by accident, I had changed the way I presented. Without really thinking about it, I put extra energy into my delivery, focused on including everyone in on what I was saying, and found ways to include the group more in the discussion. When I saw those laptops, I didn’t know what was on their screens, but I knew that to achieve my goal, I had to be more interesting than whatever it was.

Turns out, I could impact the degree to which others were paying attention, and I didn’t need to rely on gimmicks or change the content of my message to do it. All I needed were three things: (1) a goal (close all the laptops), (2) the perspective that if someone wasn’t paying attention, it wasn’t because they were the problem, it was because I wasn’t compelling enough, and (3) the willingness to let go of linear thinking. (This let me adjust my talk on-the-fly based on people’s reactions and questions, and hit my information in the order they wanted to hear it as opposed to the order I wanted to present it).

My take away? Blaming others for not paying attention to me is total bullshit. When others blow me off, it’s simply feedback that I’m not compelling enough to displace whatever else is on their mind.

And I can work with that feedback.

Can you?

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.