Presentations and training: setting up the room

Materials and equipment

• Flip charts boards - two for the main area and one for each syndicate area
• Flip chart paper
• Felt pens (black, red, blue and green - others colours do not show up well)
• Name tents
• Blue-tack or similar material
• CCTV system (optional)

Room set-up

We recommend a U-shape. Leave yourself plenty of space in the centre of the 'U' so that you can tour round when looking at individual scores with participants.

Syndicate rooms are useful but syndicate areas around the room are probably more functional. This allows you to break the group into syndicates quickly and get them back equally quickly.

A room with syndicate areas for 15/20 people, allowing space at the front, and for coffee table or trolley and space in the U, would be ideally be about 40' x 40' (13m x 13m). Using syndicate rooms, a base size for the main room would be about 33' x 24' (11m x 8m) with three syndicate rooms, each about 10' x 10' (3.3m x 3.3m).

If you have the choice, it is best to set the room up so that the windows are mostly at the back of the room, the light thereby falling towards you and the flip charts. Again, if you have the choice, try to get coffee served in "thermos" jugs and refreshed at regular intervals. This enables you to break as the progress of the events dictates, rather than when the catering people say!

The flips can be removed to provide a stage or acting area for role plays. An (optional) camera can be set up in the middle of the 'U'. When using the site's materials, most of the pre-work is done on the web, so that there is not a lot of material to give out during a programmes. The web-derived material can be brought to the programmes by the participants. We prefer to put a table against the wall to hold any other handouts.

Going further

• Supporting face to face training - how to reduce time and improve learning
• Best practice for training advisory boards - Training Departments and departments of business are often concerned to get external input. What is the best practice for training or faculty advisory boards?
• How line managers view management development - Management development must be seen to attend to the overall direction of the organization.
• Management Training - Why Bother - The old saying about advertising can be applied with equal truth to management training. 80% of it is wasted - if only we knew which 80%!
• Whither Training - The inoculation theory of education - once you have had it, you are immune for life - is well and truly over.
• Ageing and performance - We might expect that as we age our work performance will decline. It seems obvious. Not so.