The Art of Announcements

A friend once asked me why I liked emceeing, and I responded with the juggling act between strategically organizing the information you're presenting, reading the audience, and adjusting to respond to where they're at. There's also an element of freedom and deviating from the plan as you're going with your gut and the Spirit, this dynamic and exciting yet pastoral role. While I don't think I'll ever has as much emcee swag as Greg Jao, his sharing on Urbana is a pretty good snippet of why I enjoy introducing or closing a session:

"I love the challenge of capturing the participant’s attention after a long session, of reinforcing conference themes and capturing the Urbana experience when I offer participants summaries of the past 24 hours, of communicating details and logistics in helpful ways, and of responding to the needs of the conference from the platform as I go...Mostly, though, I love the challenge of trying to cast vision, pastor the participants, and serve the conference leadership in 5 minutes each session."

 And that, my friends, is what you think about when you have the mic in hand.