Feel like you need some input when giving a technical presentation?
I attended the IDC Cloud Computing conference on Tuesday. Here’s what happens when I’m in the audience at a conference (if you follow me on Twitter, you might have got these live…) My blood sugar was dropping towards the end, methinks…
[If you've just arrived from Rowan Monahan's Fortify Your Oasis site - welcome!]
In chronological order:
- I’m always interested in specialists presenting – what they feel is high level might not be their audience’s perception. Hard.
- Putting the CLEAR message of your data on the slide helps enormously
- If you’re using a non-standard chart, explain the significance of the graphics in general, before talking about the specifics.
- If you say your video is short, make it under 120 seconds. Otherwise say how long it is in minutes.
- If you ARE talking to a tech/specialist audience DO use jargon as a shortcut.
- Answering a major question with a case study can be effective.
- If you can truly answer an important concern, go ahead and answer it. If you can’t, be honest.
- Don’t leave answering major concerns til the end – start with those answers.
- Projecting slides from behind means you don’t get the evil projector deathbeam going across your face. Can approach the slide.
- Repeat after me: Teaching is the new selling.
- Even with high energy/ordinary language/ moderate pace, screens of multiple bullet points make things more difficult to follow
- Multiple bullet points make me go ‘Ok, what’s your point?!’
- If your audience ever thinks ‘So, what’s your point?’ you’ve not done your job.
- If you want to be conversational in presentations, moderate (read: feels S L O W) pace is utterly key.
- When giving a case study, check WE really need a visual aid, otherwise just tell it as a story.
- I think bullet points might be inherently boring. Enough.
- If you feel like you need to show your credentials at the beginning of a presentation, please do it in a matter of seconds.
- Slides can stop you being able to react effectively to previous speakers, especially in a conference on a single topic.
- Tell me in the first sentences of your presentation which of my problems you’re going to help me solve.
- Don’t think we’re stupid enough to not notice when you disguise a sales presentation as an educational one.
- I can deal with about 2 minutes of us-us-us-we-we-we. If you’re gonna do an ad, you’ve got 120 seconds.
- We-We-We in a presentation is like being on a date with someone who asks no questions.
- If you don’t want to go through all the POINTS why put them on the SLIDE? Didn’t have time to prepare things for me? So kind.
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At this point, I went to lunch and became a little more patient. (And I know that this article is all bullet points. But I’m not making a presentation am I? Don’t question me.)
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We had unexpected (only because we forgot their dates) and totally delightful houseguests this week, so I took some time off and did tourist things. I read no new books, saw no new websites, watched no new movies. Sorry.
Normal service (including the promised presentation superpowers) will resume next week.
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Mildly related articles
~ 9 easy things you can do to stand out in technical presentations
~ Creating slides for technical presentations
~ Marinading the big lump of clay – getting presentation material together
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