Kathy Jacobs On PowerPoint

Now that we know what the presentation needs to say, it is time to define who needs to hear each message. The match between some audiences and some messages are obvious. In Jane's case, two of the audiences are fairly obvious from the project description:

• The homebound people for whom the work will be done

• The teens who will do the work

Two more main audiences can be determined by looking at the list of messages:

• The companies who are being asked to donate funding

• The companies who are being asked to donate equipment

Link Messages To Audiences

The next step is to determine which audience members need to hear which messages. This can be done by taking the list of messages and filling the columns indicating who needs to hear each message. For example, the four audiences would be listed in our table as the columns :

• H for homeowners

• T for teens

• F for companies providing funding

• E for companies providing equipment

After Jane's first pass at creating the table, it looked like this:

Evaluate: Did We Miss Anyone?

When Jane went through the process of defining and linking the messages and the audiences, it became apparent an entire audience and the information they needed to know had been missed.

Her hidden audience was the people who supervise the teens. So, she added a column (S for supervisor) to the table to show the supervisors and marked which messages they need to know. In addition, adding an audience may reveal messages that audience needs to hear. In Jane's case, we added two messages. The table now looks like this: