10. Traditional Powerpoint Presentation
• Educational psychologists defined the best colours
• Fonts: Arial, Times New Roman
• Bullet points
• 6 per slide
• Sub-text
• Sub sub text
• Full sentences were use to explain things
• Cut and paste was used from whole documents
• Every slide looking the same as the previous slide
12. You are here to listen to the speaker not to read their slides
Slides should not be a distraction but and adjunct or focus
NO!
- 2014, Journal of Data and Analytical
Science: Dec: Vol 36, Pages 244-293
At this years state of the art meeting, we are going to try and do a few things differently and we are going to try and inspire you and light your fire!
You are all very intelligent people and this is not a simple classroom or study group,
We are sceptics, doubters, who are hungry for information and learning but you are not here to simply have this spoon fed to you.
We can all now access the huge world of information from our phones, tablets or computers
So when you come to an International Conference you are looking for something more
You want to be kept interested and and you could even go as far as to say ‘entertained’ by the presenters.
But we have also sat in lectures that feel like this, but over the next few days we hope that our carefully selected speakers are not going to see this as they look out from the stage.
We want them to stimulate your brain and your passion for critical care, to excite you and generate interest that you can take away from here, to explore and investigate further for yourself
SO I would ask you to consider over the next few days, who and how are the speakers GOING TO LIGHT YOUR FIRE?!
What is very clear is that you can have the best subject in the world
Or the most ground breaking research in the world
But dated, poorly prepared slides or poor delivery and presentation can lose everything
So let’s now consider how the world of presenting has and is changing
Powerpoint is a great tool and it remains the key programme for preparing and delivering conference presentations
Used well is can be unforgettable, but use badly and you will kill your audience!
This year at the ICS, we have some of the best modern speakers from around the world, who will not only educate and stimulate your minds, but also present in a captivating way
Good presentations need a great deal of hard work, think about your message, think how it will relate to the audience on a slide. Do you even need text. Do you even need slides!
If you are going to use slides that don’t keep simply turning to the screen and reading them out!
But let’s consider those slides for a minute and how their style has evolved over the years
This demonstrates another key issue, in that preparing a talk takes many hours of thought and mental rehearsal.
Anyone can quickly throw down a series of bullet points in Powerpoint, in the traditional yellow on blue, Times New Roman with 6 bullet points/slide
Classical approach and promoted by educational psychologists for years but the leading presenters around the world now know that this was wrong and simply switches your audience off.
Clip-art appeared and at first it was funny, but then it go so massively overused that it dropped off the map. Everyone had it on every slide in ever increasing amounts and with little true value.
Carefully used it can still have a limited place for effect…..but don’t ever expect to see it in a Presidential address!
If you are going to use text then keep it short and punchy. Short statements are best
Deliver one key message per slide wherever possible
Try and keep to 2-3 supporting messages
Avoid bullets, wherever possible and especially too many and never more than 6
Remember that the more that there is to read, the less the audience will be listening to you!
Chose your colours and your fonts to have good contrast and be clear even to the back of the room.
Always avoid sentences and unnecessary words, these are very short statements not an essay
So then we all learnt how to import images but this was in the days of low resolution digital cameras and slow computers, unable to handle large files, so we ended up with slides such as this!
There is no excuse for that these days and If you are going to use an image then make it high definition one and ideally full screen. There many sources of these from your own images through to professional stock images.
There is no excuse for that these days and If you are going to use an image then make it high definition one and ideally full screen. There many sources of these from your own images through to professional stock images.
There is no excuse for that these days and If you are going to use an image then make it high definition one and ideally full screen. There many sources of these from your own images through to professional stock images.
There is no excuse for that these days and If you are going to use an image then make it high definition one and ideally full screen. There many sources of these from your own images through to professional stock images.
There is no excuse for that these days and If you are going to use an image then make it high definition one and ideally full screen. There many sources of these from your own images through to professional stock images.
These are some of the most overused and irritating functions in Powerpoint. Using either a bad transition or the constant use of multiple transitions is distracted at best
Keep your transitions as simple as possible unless you have a specific reason
Video footage in a presentation can be hugely powerful and can deliver key messages far more effectively than speech or text.
However, video is fraught with many challenges in Powerpoint and presentation in terms of conflicts, embedding files and different IT systems.
If you are going to use a video then make sure that, it is linked to your talk, with all of the necessary files and that your IT guys know
And have checked that in runs before you start.
And while we are on about IT, thankfully something that is far less common now, but make sure that the system can cope with the size of your presentation, it is virus free and MAC/PC compatible.
As you really don’t want to see the blue screen of death, whilst on stage, mid presentation.
Complex Data and results can be a huge challenge to present effectively. Look for the speakers who are able to best demonstrate the key findings in their study. They key response or change and why they view it as significant.
How have they best managed to demonstrate this to a large audience in a few seconds, rather than in a paper that we can take time to digest?
Rise to the challenge of getting your audience to understand within the first 3-4 seconds of seeing your slide without information overlaod
You are talking, the slide has just flashed up with this and the audience are struggling to grasp all this information so quickly and inevitably not really listening to you again.
So think about you diagrams and key messages carefully as for example It’s pretty obvious that there a few issues here!
You may laugh but you will see slides like this in some presentations, then the speakers will make desperate attempts to try and break it down, usually with a wobbly laser pointer and both the poor audience and the important messages are just lost
Brighter colours and different Fonts may help, but not if the overall diagram is just far too complex. Keep it simple remains a key lesson
But while you are mocking these crazy flow charts by others…….here is an emergency difficult airway flow chart - whether you are trying to present this as a slide in the lecture theatre or when it’s all gone wrong in the ICU and the adrenaline is pumping you won’t even be able to hold the chart steady, never mind read and follow the text.
If you need such a complex diagram in a presentation, then break it down into smaller parts to improve delivery and understanding
One way to demonstrate such a complex image, chart or diagram is Prezi.
This can be a very useful way to present it in a simple and innovative way that will simplify things and keep your audience engaged.
Here is such a complex diagram and the first slide gives the overview of the bigger picture, then the subsequent slides, zoom into each of the circles for more detailed explanations
Done badly they will literally make you feel unwell with motion sickness as you zoom around the landscape of the screen,
But done well they are truly educational masterpieces and a fantastic way to demonstrate links or progressive change
One way around this is Pecha Kucha talks introduced by Japanese Architecture studies to avoiding boring powerpoints
Speakers have to ‘speak’ as they only have 6 minutes and 40 seconds, 20 slides, 20 seconds a slide and usually aim to deliver one key message
It is very effective and covers huge amounts of ground in a short period of time, keeping the audience as stimulated as possible
I’m not going to argue with this gentleman!
There are huge changes in the styles of presentation and if we look to some of the greatest speakers we can see why. They certainly don’t use traditional powerpoint.
Some of the greatest speakers and lecturers don’t use any slides or if they do, they take the minimalist approach
Be it politics
Industry; Steve Jobs was a master presenter. He used slides but kept them as simple and clear as possible,
but that didn’t mean that it came easily, he practiced and rehearsed for hours to get that seamless, effortless flow in his presentations
TED has brought many of these principles together where you can see not only some of the most interesting subjects but also some of the greatest presenters and presentations of our modern times.
If you haven’t heard about SMACC, then I am not sure where you have been but you will have done by the end of this conference.
The SMACC Conference brings together critical care with some of the most innovative and TED style speakers in the medical world today.
Lecturers present information in a way that engages the audience and stimulates them to discuss subjects and to find out more.
Some of the greatest recent presenters In medicine use every modality to stimulate their audience……… and to be a memorable speaker then you may be also chose to be a bit controversial…..stir up the crowd, get people talking, get such intelligent people thinking!
Earlier this year we sadly lost one of the best such presenters amongst our critical care colleagues. Dr John Hinds who was tragically killed doing the type of medicine that he loved
John…we miss you!
But John, like many other true Masters and Great teachers from many diverse disciplines would say this…..
How true this is…..get inspired, go and read the evidence for yourself….and find the truth
But as I said before, don’t think that such great presenting comes easy,…..even the greats such as Jobs, Carley and Cliff Reid still feel the stress before a ‘big presentation’
Yet once they are on stage in full flow, with all the good preparation and practice it never shows and they make t look so easy.
One common theme with great speakers, is that they present their message, their science or their knowledge, it in a truly memorable way.
They describe a vision, a passion or they often simply tell a story
Who will tell you a story and hold or focus your attention over the next three days?
Stories, and real clinical experiences all add to the power of learning and help the audience to build more effective memory and recall
And finally….. How the speakers appear on stage and present is just as important as the slides,
It’s vital that they get to know the stage, the venue, and the specifics of the IT system
But most of all they must think about how their presentation.
Even from this section of a bigger picture you can probably tell who this speaker is….as he has a characteristic style of delivery that works…….he is memorable!
This year at the ICSSOA15 we are going to try and embrace many of these changes to stimulate, educate and inspire you all to even greater work in coming years
Who is going to be memorable for you?
Who is going to light your fire?
