Enhancing Your Presentation: How a Comfort Monitor Can Benefit You When Addressing a Live Audience

When you are standing on a stage with the big screen behind you, it’s a natural human reaction to turn around to look at the screen to check that what is showing on your slide matches the subject you are talking about.

The problem is, that as you turn around, you very likely project your voice away from the audience, and the microphone that you are using.

It also looks a bit Victorian School Teacher to keep turning your back on the people you are trying to engage with.

Floor mounted Comfort Monitor

To avoid having to turn around, its commonplace for a screen to be set up in front of the stage, or to use the correct term, 'down stage'.

That screen is usually on the floor, or at the front of the stage and angled up so it can easily be seen by the presenter on stage.

that way, they can see exactly what is on the main screen without having to look around.

Its often referred to as a ‘comfort’ monitor, though as it's a monitor positioned 'down stage', technical teams will more likely call it a down stage monitor – or DSM.

Downstage Monitor showing PowerPoint Notes view

Most commonly you just have the same image as is displaying on the screen – but some clients like instead to show ‘presenter view’ which displays the live, or current slide, the next slide and the slide notes as well.

This is fine if you have large monitor, or are not too far away from the presenter on stage, but there has been a growing number of presenters how seem to expect to use PowerPoint notes as a full blown teleprompter. Teleprompters, often universally known by the most popular brand of prompting systems, Autocue, have the ability to scroll at varying speeds and can store an almost infinite length of script.

PowerPoint notes on the other hand is very limited in terms of number of lines of text and can't be scrolled easily during a live presentation.

It is perfect however, for script bullet points, and keeping track of where you are within a presentation, especially if you have a slide deck with complex animations.

Twin monitor set up

Confidence Digital recommends the use of a comfort monitor for all presentations, and we include one in our live presentation bundle.

For more information on how we can support your in person, hybrid, or virtual events, get in touch hello@confidence-digital.com.