How to avoid the common pitfalls of poor presentationsUnderstanding yourself and your topicOrganizing presentations with a laser focus on what you want the audience to know
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The Preparation
Know Your Stuff
Know Your Audience
Know Your Stage – F2f, Online, Small Group, Big Room? Really Big Room?
Know Your Slot times, are you the only speaker following someone? Are you speaking as part of a larger session or are you it?
Know Your Stage – F2f, Online, Small Group, Big Room? Really Big Room?
What are you trying to deliver to your audience and Why?
Not the fancy or not so fancy slides, pages of statistics, or pictures of your cats or dogs. None of these are as important as you. Whatever tool you use you have to remember you are the presentation. You are why they have come to speak. Anything that takes away from that experience should be disposed of as soon as possible.
If you can bring your own clicker. There is nothing like learning a new clicker because you forgot yours 900 miles away. Every clicker has their own quirks. Be sure that you have your own so that there are few surprises.
Unless most of you audience knows it.
Think cue cards. This printout is directly for your benefit and your audience will appreciate the smooth flow of the presentation.As for the backup, think redundancy. A copy of your original on your flash drive. One on your computer, One in the cloud. Another in the cloud. And bring your own clicker. Really. For a virtual course, your producer should have a copy of your presentation with scripting in case your connection becomes toast. Then the course can continue while you figure out your digital difficulties. Sometimes
So, do you think PowerPoint is the problem when creating ugly/or ineffective slide decks? Of course it is not the problem. The design and execution is the problem.
This is cribbed from a presentation about android applications. I bet you are trying to read each thing and are thinking I cant follow this. YEP.
Four Tips. Five by five. Five words on 5 lines max. MAXAge of oldest person in room divided by 2 is the smallest size you should have Sans serif fonts like times new roman, are a little harder to read than the sans serif fonts like Arial and Calibri. These fonts do not have small “bits” on the top, bottom, or sides of the letters and are easier to read.
Four Tips. Five by five. Five words on 5 lines max. MAXAge of oldest person in room divided by 2 is the smallest size you should have Sans serif fonts like times new roman, are a little harder to read than the sans serif fonts like Arial and Calibri. These fonts do not have small “bits” on the top, bottom, or sides of the letters and are easier to read.
Four Tips. Five by five. Five words on 5 lines max. MAXAge of oldest person in room divided by 2 is the smallest size you should have Sans serif fonts like times new roman, are a little harder to read than the sans serif fonts like Arial and Calibri. These fonts do not have small “bits” on the top, bottom, or sides of the letters and are easier to read.
Four Tips. Five by five. Five words on 5 lines max. MAXAge of oldest person in room divided by 2 is the smallest size you should have Sans serif fonts like times new roman, are a little harder to read than the sans serif fonts like Arial and Calibri. These fonts do not have small “bits” on the top, bottom, or sides of the letters and are easier to read.
Four Tips. Five by five. Five words on 5 lines max. MAXAge of oldest person in room divided by 2 is the smallest size you should have Sans serif fonts like times new roman, are a little harder to read than the sans serif fonts like Arial and Calibri. These fonts do not have small “bits” on the top, bottom, or sides of the letters and are easier to read.
Four Tips. Five by five. Five words on 5 lines max. MAXAge of oldest person in room divided by 2 is the smallest size you should have Sans serif fonts like times new roman, are a little harder to read than the sans serif fonts like Arial and Calibri. These fonts do not have small “bits” on the top, bottom, or sides of the letters and are easier to read.
KISS Keep it San Serif …but what exactly does that mean?
Sans serif fonts like times new roman, are a little harder to read than the sans serif fonts like Arial and Calibri. These fonts do not have small “bits” on the top, bottom, or sides of the letters and are easier to read.
These do not work in large scale deployment for slide decks.
Deck creation tools are just that. Tools. Nothing more nothing less. Don’t use them to deliver your presentation. Practice your presentation with out any technology. Just you/and a writing surface. Does that make for a better presentation?
The more you practice the less nervous about the content and what you want to say, the less you have to worry about when you are right about to present. If you have a smartphone or a friend with a smartphone, you can tape your delivery. Be warned. You will not sound like you think you do. No where like it. But that happens to everyone so you are all good.
You want to rehearse timing, tone, etc. And you practice by yourself to get it right in you head. Make notes in your head so you don’t have to look directly down at the notes the ENTIRE TIME. BAD HABIT.
Now that you have some form for your presentationyou should practice with 2 types of people. Someone who knows that the subject and someone who does not know the subject. They will each give you different feedback to improve your presentation. My wife hears most of my presentations before folks see them. She gives great feedback looking for clarity and pacing. If you have a smartphone or a friend with a smartphone, you can tape your delivery. Be warned. You will not sound like you think you do. No where like it. But that happens to everyone so you are all good.
We all do them. The words that break up perceived uncomfortable silences. Transitional words. Un Needed transitional words. A pause of silence is better than any of these packing peanut words.
Scott Barzun's Confessions of A Public Speaker and the Classic from Dale Carnegie Public Speaking for Success are both great starting points on your better public speaking journey.
Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte and Presentation Zen by Garr Renyolds are two great starting points for good design leading to great presentation