Delivering Presentations that don't suck
Last week was almost a perfect storm of presentations this week:
- A Deep dive on Excel 2007 and Access 2007 for hardcore banking users
- A whole of Office System walkthrough
- "Collaboration Anywhere with Groove and SharePoint" at the SharePoint Forum
- "Delivering Systems that user's don't hate" at the SharePoint Forum
Firstly, I don't regard myself as a particularly good presenter... which is why I try and present so much. However, by lacking no natural gift or flair for theatrics, I am forced to rely on a more scientific approach to presenting. Here are some tips that I have gathered over the years:
- Either
- Be damn sexy and win people over with pure animal magnetism or
- Be funny. If you can't get people to laugh with you, get them to laugh at you.
- Tag-team wherever possible, the presentation becomes a conversation more than a lecture. 16 years of schooling and company meetings has killed most people's tolerance for a one man show.
- Make the topic as interesting as possible, with small words. Nobody wants to sit through 45 minutes of "Interoperability in complex heterogeneous environments" when they could listen to "Get stuff done in a sticky situation". If you think that you need to use big words to be taken seriously, use the colon, "Get stuff done in a sticky situation: Interoperability in complex heterogeneous environments".
- Find a process that works for you. Plenty of people will tell you how to deliver powerful presentations, crucial conversations and daring demos. I really like Beyond Bullet Points, mainly because of the practical tools it provides. I was a bit suspicious of the extra workload all the planning processes would take, but now I find that I can belt out a presentation a lot quicker using the templates and storyboards.
- Break up slides with demos, videos, songs, Q&As or whatever. I think people have a 3 slide maximum. If you hit more than 3 in a row, people fall asleep.
- Always create a new deck for every presentation. You learn each time you give a presentation - shouldn't that be reflected in your content?
- Paradoxically, never start from scratch. If you are covering similar content, reuse what you are familiar with, but tweak it.
- Stay away from transitions and funky animations. You overestimate your ability!
That's my tips so far, plenty more to come as I make more and more embarrassing presentations.
