How do you warm up a large audience?

You are in a room, in front of a large group of viewers, listeners and hopefully admirers. You are just about to begin a lecture, a presentation or a speach. How do you engage everyone's attention in a way that leads them to the topic?

Well, the easiest route is to ask them to dance, move around in the room, play a game or tell a joke. How about people who are not willig to behave like kids or feel offended by the topic of the joke?

Here is one idea that I used on a conference (ETC 2013): Take a careful look around, most probably there is something catchy in the environment that you can use as a riddle. Use it as a simple, yet powerful tool to jump start your session.

For example, how many of you know that the furniture equipment company Steelcase has played a major role in the first steps of the company IDEO? How can we connect this to the topic of the presentation of Design Thinking? Quite simple. Start with the question "Can you please tell me the manufacturer of the chairs used in this room and why is it important for our topic today?". As it happens they are a very fine example ot Steelcase chairs and at least someone in the audience will be able to deduce the connection.

So, with a very short question that does not require extensive effort you will achieve several goals:
 - people will start thinking about your topic - great, as they will listen more carefully
 - they will look around and make a basic connection to the ones sitting next to them - you can use this at later stages of your presentation, such as hands-on sessions
 - they will wake up, provided that you are one of the many speakers in a long series or presentations.

Great start!

Now you have to raise the bar with the presentation itself.