Preparation is essential for a great presentation

When I talked about the steps to a great presentation, I defined the "preparation stage" as the first phase one has to go through. We could also call it planning or organization, but I went with preparation, because you prepare your presentation to be something lasting. Planning and organizing are just parts of it.
Anyway, it doesn't matter in which context you decided to do a presentation, preparation is essential. I propose the following aspects are worth thinking about. The outcome of the presentation will largely rely on your preparation.
While you go through the stages of creating your presentation, everything will essentially go back to this preparation stage and you will safe a lot of time later, if you commit to putting more time - as usual maybe - into the preparation phase.


The following points are only outlines of important things to consider and I will probably feature them in future blog posts in more detail.

Schedule to the DEADLINE:
This is supposedly the most important aspect to the whole process. If you have the greatest presentation ever, but you are 2 days late, nobody will hear you. The usual deadline is a good and fair amount of days ahead of the day you received your assignment. For me personally, it becomes more scary the closer I approach it. The easy solution is to "dress this scary thing up in a funny costume, so we can approach it with confidence". Kidding aside, what I mean is that with preparation (the costume) your presentation will become better and successful most importantly.

Here are some things I suggest you can do:

• Schedule a meeting, if you are in a team, or take some time for yourself aside to sketch out the process
• Create an overview over the next couple of weeks and put either your free time you can allocate to creating the presentation into it, or note down any appointments and schedules that will prevent you from working on it. You will probably find, that the more people there are in a group, the harder it gets to find times where everybody has time to attend meetings. Don't forget, that the sunday after a big party might not quite be the best time to work on your presentation, so stay ahead ;-)
• Plan the further stages of the presentation process. I suggest you go backwards from the deadline of the presentation.
• I will explain in later posts what the "delivery stage" means for me, but keep things in mind like technology. Be sure to include a day in your schedule where you check out the venue of the presentation. Test all the equipment you will need and make sure you have the number of the tech guys and call them before the presentation, not during!
• Keep at least the day before the presentation for rehearsal. Better yet are two to three rehearsals during the week before the presentation, if you can manage to do so.
• Maybe you have to prepare an essay or an handout as well. These documents need some time as well. Make sure when to hand them in and allocate time to do it.
• Putting your presentation together should be one of the last steps before rehearsal, but make sure to estimate the time you will need. At this stage, if you are working in a group, you probably want every member present, so find a convenient time.
• Allocate time for sufficient research. All your presenting skills will only work if you have good content.
• Think about short meetings to track overall progress.
• Have one or two brainstorming sessions before your research and maybe after you dug a little bit into your topic. It is frustrating to find yourself working in the wrong direction after a couple of weeks.

Definitions:

Before you start gathering all kinds of great things and thoughts about your topic you need some clarification on a couple of things that are key to your success. 

• Purpose - Get the purpose for your presentation right. If you don't have a purpose, define one for yourself. It might also be crystal clear for you what you want to say and this will help you get along the other tasks very easily. In a university context, try to clearly understand the task you have been given. Ask for clarification, if the task is not specific enough. Maybe your creativity is encouraged. I talk about assignments in last weeks post. The bottom line for students is - unfortunately maybe - to get the assignment right and fullfil the requirements.
• Goals and objectives - Define your goals for the presentation. Do you want to score a good grade? Do you want to make an impact on peoples lives? Do you want to sell an idea. State clearly your personal objectives and have everybody working on the presentation commit to them.
• The Audience - Define your audience. Try this as detailed as possible. Are they your classmates you know. Are they total strangers. What do you know about them? Demographics and geographics can be very important. What is their prior knowledge of the field? Try to think about your audience with marketing goggles on: What are their needs? What are their wants? What are the trends? What are the uncertainties? Are there risks to disrespect a part of the audience? Remember: the audience is king and you will try everything to please them. Well maybe not everything ;-)
• Your message - Once you have defined your audience you want or need to reach, you need to tailor a message for them. This is the essence of your presentation. You want the audience to take something away from your presentation and you want to do it in the most memorable way. You might argue that academic presentations are only about delivering content slide after slide, point after point. I argue that this is not the case. A board meeting is not about presenting the sales figures of the last quarter, but about delivering a message - a new strategic direction perhaps - backed up with content. A presentation is not a written essay or a report. It is a visual way of delivering your findings. I will defend on this statement in future blog posts because I think, that this is the point where many opinions might differ.
• Brainstorming / Structure / Outline - If the basic structure is already clear to you, jot it down visually so that everybody in your team can visualize it. Maybe you need to work out the structure step by step and you need to do some brainstorming first. Make one or two brainstorming sessions to gather all your thoughts and ideas. Use different brainstorming techniques and try to visualize your ideas. This will ultimately help your audience as well to understand what you want to say, providing them with the visual aids. Create an outline of things you want and need to cover.
  The more detailed these steps are pursued, the easier it will be to research your topic and put the eventual presentation together. I will elaborate on these topics also in future posts.
• Medium - Lastly decide on the medium you will use to deliver your presentation. There's a crazy idea I want to float by you. Why not go PowerPoint free? Why not go technology free? It really depends on your topic, but you should at least think about it. Maybe you can create an engaging story that will stick in peoples minds longer than a set of slides. If you are not familiar with presentation software at all, either learn how to use it right, but never just use it because everybody else does it! If you are not a pro in slide design, a whiteboard, visualizer or a flip-chart will do just fine to help you get your point across. But remember, that presentation software has its merits and if you can use it in an effective way, then please do so. I am planning a whole section on software such as PowerPoint, so stay with me. Whatever you come up with though, know how to utilize in the best way possible.

Remember all these steps can be completed without using a computer and I suggest that pen and paper can do their magic. Please don't ever make the mistake to plan or outline your thoughts in PowerPoint. I know and I have done it, too. It is tempting, but this it not what it is for. There are plenty of planning, brainstorming and outlining tools for your computer and you should use them as they are intended. (I will cover some applications in future videos on my website.) PowerPoint or other presentation software, if any at all, should be the last application you open on your computer while you work on your presentation. Although, I encourage you to play around with it and familiarize yourself with it, if you are not an expert. I hope to feature some best practices and uses with presentation software on my website in a couple of months. Otherwise check YouTube for a ton of tutorial videos. But be careful, there are a lot of bad practices on YouTube, so I advise you to find channels from proven experts. Hopefully I can manage to gather some good links, when I am covering presentation software. So stay tuned!

One last thing. This might all sound reasonable, but why should we spend so much time preparing? Sufficient preparation will give you a clear vision of what lies ahead and it won't lead you in wrong and different directions. Try the NIKE approach: Just Do It! Take your next presentation project and try to apply thoughtful preparation and analyze afterwards if it helped you.

Well this wraps up this weeks topic. There are so many things I just mentioned and I can assure you, that I will address them in the future. I hope you found this useful and worth spreading. Comment if you want to add anything or if you disagree.