What Is a Cracker Barrel?
Cracker Barrel is a type of presentation format. The name comes from the training community, where the Cracker Barrel is an institution at the International Society for Performance Improvement Conference and a popular activity at other training conferences and events. People like this format because it gives them an opportunity to hear about the topics they’re most interested in and interact directly with the speaker. In our class, several presentations occur simultaneously. Participants are assigned to the presentation they attend first, but eventually hear all of the presentations. Each 10-minute Cracker Barrel presentation loosely follows this format: • An introduction to the concept being taught • Examples of the concept applied to the real world • An exercise in which your classmates apply the skills to a real-world problem • A summary of the main points Feel free to adapt this format to the needs of your subject matter.
