This presentation was originally created for use at Microsoft. This version was made in response to demand at university for a source of presentation skills.
Hi and welcome to this session on Presenting for Non-Presenters. You’re all here (I imagine) because you have some presentations coming up and are fearing the worst, Hopefully, this session will make you feel a little better. Let’s look at what we’re going to cover in this session...
I’m not going to dwell on these as I'm going to discuss them all but, depending on the length of your own presentations, you may or may not wish to provide a brief overview of the presentation contents. So how did I come to be standing here and what do I know about presentations anyway?
Before I was a student I worked in IT for 12 years. My last job involved designing and authoring technical content for Microsoft, HP and Intel. A lot of this technical content was (or included) PowerPoint presentations and I was often required to deliver presentations that I had created. I originally created this slide deck for delivery to internal audiences within Microsoft to prepare employees to deliver sessions at Microsoft’s many user focussed conferences and events. Before I started at uni, I had little idea that my PowerPoint expertise would come in handy on my degree course. The slide deck is pitched at a very general level and any Microsoft specific content has been removed in order to remain relevant to this audience but also to stop me getting in trouble from Bill :-). Effective presenting is a key skill especially if, like my degree, you’re marked for how well you do it. There are lots of studies that demonstrate the impact of visual aids in enhancing a presentation but there are just as many that warn of inflicting ‘Death by PowerPoint’ on your audience. There are 5 key points that you need to keep at the front of your mind when creating and delivering a presentation...
Presenting to win sounds cheesy but it’s an easy way of conveying that you’re presenting for a reason, be it winning a sale, passing an assessment, briefing on new research findings or just telling folks about a recent trip. The first point is to know your audiences’ WIIFY. Basically, you need to understand what attendees are hoping to get from the presentation and give it to them. Hopefully, I covered that for this audience on the first slide when I gave a brief explanation of what the session was all about. You might want to be more explicit and stick on its own slide. The 3 T’s are: Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them. This feeds back into the WIIFY and also ensures a thorough coverage of your subject matter. Interleaving slides like introductions, demos and Q and A should break it up so that it doesn’t seem too repetitive. This is quite possibly the most important point here. If you don’t follow this, death by PowerPoint is a certainty. If the words coming out of your mouth are the same as those on the screen then you immediately make your presentation pointless. Either that or you may as well just give people a handout and not bother to switch the projector on! Engage your audience by making them feel like you’re talking to them rather than at them. There are lots of tricks for this if you’re the nervous type. Finally, give your presentation an element of authority. It’s all very well having a fantastic looking slide deck with a rehearsed delivery if you don’t know the subject matter. Do your research and build the slide deck as you go. Add all the fancy stuff on at the end. In some cases, certainly true for L1 undergraduates, you’re presenting because you have to but later on and as you move into your careers, you present because you want to, because you’re an authority, because you know what you’re talking about, because people want to hear what you’ve got to say. OK. Let’s look at some PowerPoint specific advice...
When I say know the basics, I mean just that. Anyone who has done the PD module should already know PowerPoint basics - if not, you can find the details easily enough in PowerPoint Help or on Studentcentral. Beyond that, you can customise slide masters, use presenter mode if you’re in a classroom setting like this. When creating slides try to not to overwhelm the audience with text; slides with more than 20 words are too wordy. Make the slide short and to the point. You can be as verbose as you like in the script. Avoid using more than two levels of bullets. Also, don’t put long URLs in the slides. Use something like TinyURL or hyperlink them and then share the slide deck with anyone that wants it. Slide builds are good. They break up the presentation, and any change of visual on the screen will always cause any audience members who are drifting off to look again. When selecting builds try to keep to a standard throughout for example, all agenda and bulleted lists wipe in from the left-hand side. Slide builds also keep the show moving, it you do have a lot of text on a slide, if that slide appears all at once the presenter has to wait for the audience to read the entire slide before they can speak, building small chunks quickens the pace. Text overload should be avoided as outlined above. Transitions (verbal and graphic) are also good For every two or three text slides you should try to have one graphic slide. Pictures are the best form of medium to relay your point in PowerPoint, (See Text on slides.). Pictures are worth a 1000 words, they take the load off the script and keep the audience with you. Choose your colours wisely and use a consistent style across the entire deck. There are also some visual style conventions you should bear in mind (parallel bullets, orphaned bullets) I’ll try and illustrate some of these points quickly for you.
I should point out that I'm using PowerPoint 2003 for this demo but the technique is virtually the same in Office 2007, Mac Office 2004 or 2008 or Apple Keynote. Demo the following: Building a slide deck from an outline Good slide vs. bad slide Colour matching Slide Builds Prompt Not Script Parallel and Orphan Bullets Demos from the floor
Allow plenty of time for setting up (preferably the night before if possible). Test your equipment in plenty of time before the presentation. Make sure the projector is focused and correctly adjusted for horizontal and skew (i.e. top is same width as bottom). When presenting, don’t stand in the projector beam. Don’t point with your finger to things in the presentation – use the mouse. Check the marker pens all work and you know where the eraser is. Know where the controls/light switches are and how they work. Project your voice but don’t shout. Engage with your audience – look into someone’s eyes for about two seconds then look at someone else. When asking questions to check knowledge – pose, pause, pounce. Don’t nominate someone then ask the question as everyone else switches off. Use confirmation – if someone answers correctly or incorrectly, check with other people – “Is he right?” “Is he right? And so on. Be specific when asking for questions “Are there any questions about such and such topic?” Otherwise you’ll get the “Why do dogs have black noses?” question. Also if a question asked is inaudible to the rest of the group, repeat the question for everyone else before answering it. Leave the audience with a call to action or challenge. Give them something to actively engage them beyond the end of the presentation.
OK I’m sure you’re all gagging to ask questions so fire away!
These are some of the additional resources I’d recommend you look at. This presentation will be available for download from the UoB PsychSoc website in a day or two if you want to get a copy.