Disrupt expectations; the confetti cannon works.

technique — attributed to Ben Parr

Parr's disruption trigger principle is that we pay attention to people and things that violate our expectations of how the world is supposed to work. A monotone presentation with ten bullet points fails. The less predictable the speech, the better. Parr's literal example is a confetti cannon he would set off in the middle of the crowd. Right after the disruption, people would start paying much more attention to his talk. The technique generalizes beyond the literal cannon. Any planned violation of expectation (an unexpected pause, a surprise guest, a dramatic visual shift, a question the audience did not see coming) produces the same attentional reset. Speakers who never violate expectations get the audience's body but not its mind.

For keynote speakers, conference programmers, and presenters thinking about how to hold large-room attention. The technique is most useful for talks longer than fifteen minutes where attention will otherwise drift.

disruption-trigger, confetti-cannon, surprise, monotone