Archive for February, 2010
Presentation Zen Design is now published and available from all good book stores. For all my readers in Korea, you can obtain your copy from Kyobo Bookstore by clicking HERE
I received my copy a week ago and I must admit I cannot put it down. It is full of fantastic tips and ideas for designing your next presentation. So please go out and buy a copy today and help spread the news of better presentations.
More information can be received at:
There is a lot of advice written about choosing your words carefully, using correct sentences and power words. And this advice is often given with good intentions. However, when we get stressed about sentence structure, the words we use and grammar, we begin to forget about our story and start sounding scripted.
For the most part we are not politicians giving speeches. We are business people and college students giving presentations about a product or service. The best presentations always come across like a conversation with the audience and when we have a conversation with our friends or coworkers we are not stressing about the words we are using. In fact when we take too much care about our sentences and words we prevent our natural personality from shining through and this makes our presentation sound flat.
It is of course important to be understood, and there are rules about rubbishing your competition, but this should not prevent you from using the vocabulary you are familiar and comfortable with. When you use your natural vocabulary, your natural personality comes through and when you give a presentation this is so important. Allowing your natural personality out, will bond you more positively with your audience.
So. next time you are preparing your presentation, drop those unfamiliar sounding and abstract words, and use your natural vocabulary. You and your audience will have a much closer relationship and you will feel much more relaxed.
Last week, a student of mine delivered a presentation in front of 600 people. My student is a Mac user, and therefore we had spent many hours preparing his slides in Apple’s Keynote. We had designed some really cool slide transitions to help demonstrate some points, we had also used a few videos as backdrops. When my student arrived at the venue (early, as I always teach) he discovered that for some reason his MacBook did not work properly with the projector being used at the venue.
Now in many cases, presenters do not think “what happens if something goes wrong?” I always make sure my students have a copy of their presentation saved on a USB drive in PowerPoint format (fortunately Keynote allows you to save your files as PowerPower). In this case my student was able to use his backup PowerPoint file to deliver his presentation.
And this brings me to the main point. Always, always and always prepare a backup file of your presentation. Even if you have prepared your file in PowerPoint, save a copy onto a USB drive. You never know what might go wrong with your computer. If you have prepared a Keynote file, save a copy of it as PowerPoint and so if you do have problems at venues with dated technology, or connectors, you can use someone else’s computer to deliver your presentation.
Another good practice is to save any unusual fonts that you might be using onto your USB drive. I gave a presentation last year, where I had to use someone else’s computer. Unfortunately, the computer I used did not have the same fonts that I had. I learned that I needed to make sure that I took copies of my fonts so that if I had to use another computer my presentation would not suffer.
So remember, backup, backup and backup.
Much is written about your core message when giving a presentation. And this is justified.
When we give a presentation, we are delivering a message to our audience. In that message there will be a main point, or what is more commonly called “your core message”. That main point has to be the focus of your presentation. Unfortunately, when we delivery a 45 minute presentation, that core message can often get lost. We then go off the main topic and never return to it. This is when we forget our core message.
What happens then, is our audience becomes confused and very likely unable to remember the information you wanted them to remember.
So how do we prevent this from happening?
It really all comes down to our planning. Too many times when we begin a presentation we open our presentation software, and then start writing our slides. Planning this way (if you can really call that planning) almost always results in a confused and detached presentation with no core message.
What we should be doing is planning on paper.
Write the main theme, topic or message in the middle of a piece of paper, then branch off subjects and themes you wish to talk about. Below is an example of how this might look:
By writing the main message in the middle of the page, you maintain your focus on the core message when you are planning and so are unlikely to digress off the subject.
It is really that simple. By following this method, you maintain your focus on your core message and your presentation will flow that much easier. This is yet another reason why you should never open your presentation software before you plan on paper.
Over at the Duarte blog (a must read for anyone serious about presenting) Nancy Duarte writes about Steve Ballmer’s Windows 7 launch presentation.
Personally, I think Steve Ballmer did a great job. Nancy evaluates the language he used, and I agree that some of his words, sentences and expressions could have been improved, but this is Steve Ballmer and he has his own unique style.
The performance might not be as polished as a Steve Jobs’ presentation, but it does get the message across that Windows 7 is better, faster and more efficient than Windows Vista.
I like Steve Ballmer’s style, it is full of passion and enthusiasm and he does not pretend to be someone he is not. I personally think because he never sounds too polished or cautious he actually comes across genuine and believable.
However, you can see for yourself, here is a clip from the launch.
Animating your slides can really make your presentation come alive. Sadly, as with all great tools, animation is quite often abused and some presenters overdo the animation. When animation is overdone, the message in your presentation is often lost as your audience is more interested in what will be the next animation.
However, animating your slides can be really useful when you want to bring in information slowly. It is not a good idea to put all the information you want to talk about onto a slide and have your audience see what you are about to say. Human nature means that your audience will always read ahead of you. The best way to handle this is to build in some ‘builds’ – “Build” means bringing in your text or image in stages. For example:
I use my presentation software to teach my business English classes. Quite often I begin a class with a series of discussion questions. However, I do not want my students to be thinking of the next question, I want them focussed on the question I want answering at the moment. To achieve this I bring each question in using my animation tools (in this case a build)
In the example below, I have taken 4 slides, and written the question I want to ask on each slide. I have then used the transition function to create a small, simple animation. The animation creates flow and movement within my presentation, but it does so in a way that my audience will not be focussed on my animation.
Remember, my goal is to have student focus on the question and not the animation. This means when I am putting together my questions, I am first thinking of my audience, and second thinking of the animation.
Here is a short video of the finished result:
I hope this little post helps you think a little more creatively about your slides. If anyone does have a specific tutorial request, please feel free to leave a message on this blog and I will be happy to write a tutorial for you.
Most presentations that I attend or see online begin with nothing spectacular. They usually begin with a “Good morning. Thank you for coming today”. And while this is an OK beginning, that is exactly what it is. It is an “OK” beginning.
There is no inspiration, there is no excitement, and lets be honest the media have not been hyping your presentation for the previous 4 months. Steve Jobs may be able to get the audience excited with a “good morning. Thank you for coming today” beginning, the chances of you being able to do so are pretty slim.
I would not suggest you come running down the centre isle of the room like a TV Presenter or a pop star, but there are a few little things that you can do to help get your presentation off to a great start that wins your audience over and gets the atmosphere moving into a positive direction.
The first method I first saw Garr Reynolds do when he presented at Google Authors, it is simple, but very effective. Below is a sample of how he used animation to say “thank you”
In this slide you see a simple, small “thank you”. When Garr Reynolds shows this slide he says “I just want to say thank you, but not just a small thank you, a really big thank you”
As he says “… a really big thank you” the slide changes from the above slide to the slide below.
This is a nice simple way to get your audience smiling, if not laughing, and really does help to get your audience into a positive frame of mind.
Another way to begin your presentation is to begin with an amazing statistic. For example:
This is a slide that Steve Jobs used in his January 2010 presentation to introduce the iPad. That is an awesome statistic and one that had the audience clapping. Again, the objective of such an opening is to create a positive atmosphere and both the methods I have shown here certainly help to achieve that goal.
One of my favourite opening at the moment is to use video to introduce myself – I talked about the use of HD video as a background to your welcome slide in a previous post, and I have recently been using it to introduce myself when I open a presentation. (you can view that post here)
Another interesting way to make your opening a little more interesting is to use images from your own life (I admit this is another idea from Garr Reynolds) I used this style when I opened my presentation at TED MeongDong, Korea. Below is my slide deck from that presentation.
So when you open your next presentation, think about how you can utilise some creativity to make your opening a little more interesting. It not only makes you look more interesting, it also makes the whole event of your presentation more interesting.