Are you the master of your presentation?

Imagine the following scenario set in a classroom. (Please be aware: the following lines are somewhat fictional...)

Students are awaiting the lecturer. Entrance: the lecturer. She bows to the computer, praying it will boot up quickly. 5 minutes into booting casual conversations among students arise and the first phones on the table feature flying birds crashing into green monsters without arms and legs. The printout of slides are handed down and by the time the PowerPoint presentation is loaded some students already have read through the set of slides and go back to sleep.
There we go, the presentation is loaded, with text and students end their discussion on how loaded they were at the weekend. The lecturer bows down before the screen, calling "all hail to powerpoint" and starts a monologue and the a dialogue with the screen. There is almost no eye-contact or any kind of rapport with the students. The lecturer keeps on talking and apologizes to the screen that he or she forgot about a slide that was thought to be deleted the last time on the computer.
The lecture is over, students go home with mixed feelings and the lecturer kisses the computer good night.

Back to reality... or did we never leave it? I don't want to be the judge of that. My point is that many people tend to be the servant of technology, not the masters of technology. Why is that. As a presenter you are an expert of the field you present, anything else would be outrageous to me, especially in a university context.
I don't know when PowerPoint was established as a part of almost every presentation. Presentation = PowerPoint. Everyone accepted this apparently. I compare PowerPoint to a dragon, because if it is handled right, it can be your most powerful companion, but without knowledge of how to master it, the dragon will torch you in flames. So what do you do, if you don't know how to handle a dragon? You stay away from it!! Why not get a dog? What I am trying to say is, that many people seem to be forced into PowerPoint without ever been instructed how to use it.
Apparently PowerPoint was developed to help the Marketing Department communicate with other departments. So I assume, before PowerPoint they used memos, reports, flip-charts and blackboards to get their points across. It has the great capability to show visuals, animate graphs and everything you need to visualize a 1000 page long report. It is not about copying parts of the report onto the slides.
So where did this message get lost?? I still wonder?

Presenters, especially lecturers, need to break out of the imprisonment by technology. I am not necessarily saying that they should find other ways to present, but rather educate themselves in how to use this piece of technology. It must be clear, what PowerPoint is for and what it is not for. Then there are just a few functions to master and you will be the master of PowerPoint. This should eradicate scenarios like the one I described above.

What are other reasons, you can think of, why so many people tend to cling onto their PowerPoint slides and don't break free and use it as their humble servant?

Have a good week.

"What I want to talk about today" - the Agenda

Without having conducted a survey about it, I am confident enough to state, that most PowerPoint presentations begin with a title slide and what follows is an agenda, table of contents or whatever you want to call it.

These usually look like table of contents from a textbook. Outline style, two to three indentations, getting you excited to read the book. Well, maybe.

I argue that a table of contents should not appear on slides in a presentation. I am not saying, however, that one should skip the part of introducing an overview of what the presentation is about. Here is a discussion:

A agenda or toc helps you to understand the main structure of your presentation.

That's why it is on the  first or second slide, duh.

But it is only visible for the first 30 seconds maybe and still just text, not visuals.

The agenda should help your audience to follow along your presentation.

That's why there is a little table of content on the side or the bottom of the slide.

This distracts your audience from the  point you are trying to make with the slide. It should therefore appear on your handout, so anybody can refer to it, whenever he or she wants. Thus people only get distracted from your argument on the slide while they look up the agenda on the handout. Not the whole time.

So I just leave the "overview part" out of the presentation? This cannot be right?

True. Why don't you use compelling visuals, pictures or a short provocative thesis on your slides and go over your agenda this way. If your audience demands a written agenda, they can look on their handout and you can tease them with a photo.


What do you think? If you are not convinced, please drop me another counterargument making the case for an onscreen written agenda.


I am trying to get away from presentations that just cover topics. I think a presentation needs to have a message that is written like a thesis, which you are going to justify by covering your content. People will not only grab a hold of the theory but also why it is relevant and how it might be applied.

I suggest the first slide should have a compelling title. A provocative statement. A thesis. I discourage you to use questions. If you do, make sure you have a definite and strong answer. A definite statement at the beginning can be a powerful enabler to get the attention of your audience. And this is what you seek. The attention of your audience. Only if you have their attention you can build up a rapport with them and engage them. Introduce your overview over your top three or four topics you want to cover with powerful images or photos. You can also use an easy to grasp graphic or statistic.
In the end this will help you to get your message across more easily and your audience will be able to retain the information more easily.

Tell me what you think about this method of wiping the table of contents of the slide. Comment and share this with people, you think can connect to this.


Have a good week.

All about handouts

Do you prepare handouts for your presentation?

Handouts, these additional pieces of paper you hand out to your audience. Before or afterwards? Hmm...

I would like to make a case for more effective handouts that accompany your presentation and actually help your audience understand you better.

First of all, I want to clear up some terminology: I distinguish - in contrary to many people I know - between "handouts" and "printouts".
A printout of your slides is not a handout in my opinion. A handout should add value to your talk and help your audience to follow along.

I have never gotten a handout that accompanied any of my lectures. I got printouts. Some feature 6 slides per page, some three with additional lines for note-taking. Of course in black and white so you can rarely identify a graph with many colored lines on it. In my opinion this is a waste of paper. Sometimes I think: "Oh gosh, this poor tree, if it would only know what it had become." Seriously though, I have a simple rule, which, when applied, can make presentations so much better, especially lectures. 

Put all the text that is on your slides into a word processing document and accompany your talk with visuals in a PowerPoint, if desired.

So many times I look at lecture slides and think to myself, this is a paragraph of a textbook divided into bullet points. Text is for textbooks and journals. A presentation - especially a lecture - should appeal not to verbal learners only, but to visual and auditorial learners as well. Afterwards you can mention books to read, but usually I read a dumbed down version of a textbook on the big lecture theatre screen. I will come back to this issue in later posts.

Back to handouts. They can release your actual presentation from so much distracting clutter, but so many people don't do it. "Here are your slides to follow along". I find this confusing to be honest. I tested several methods in a couple of lectures recently:
In the first lecture, I read through the whole set of slides and unfortunately encountered that the lecturer didn't give any additional information what so ever. So why doesn't he or she just send us the slides to read and just skips the lecture?? This is not the case in every lecture I will gladly add.
Oh well, another time, I put the printout aside and just concentrated on the lecturer. I listened to him without looking at the slides and tool notes on my notepad. It was hard, but I found this the most effective way, unfortunately. This made the slides redundant, on screen as well as on paper.
Then I tried the approach that is apparently the way to do it... Take the printout, highlight the headings of the slides, take notes, listen to the lecturer and pay attention to the awesome slides on the screen. It doesn't work out for me, personally. I'm not saying that this method is ineffective in some ways and some might get along well, but I find the following approach much better:

• Create a script of what you want to say in your presentation.
• Create a handout which has the following contents
• a coversheet with title, date, and the agenda for the day
• one or two sheets for notes
• a summary of facts, definitions, tables, graphs, additional reading and the lot in the order, in which you are presenting them
• Create a PowerPoint (or similar) with VISUALS that explain, highlight and reinforce the content on your handout in a meaningful way.

So, now you have a script for yourself, that hopefully helps you not to read off the screen. But you can't read off the screen anyway, because there are almost no words on it anymore - hopefully. You hand the agenda or table of contents out to your audience, so they can follow along your presentation and can, if they like, check at any time, where your are in your presentation. This eliminates the need for an on screen agenda. You might show them visuals that relate to the points in the agenda.
Now, if your text, that was previously on your slides, is now on the handout, nothing horrible has happened, right? Your audience can still read the text on their handout in a much nicer format. Remember it was previously on the printed slides! Text can be very easily word processed, but anyone will struggle to put it onto slides effectively.
So I argue that your text is still there for your audience to read, in a better format and that there is now a big opportunity on the screen to reinforce this text. Show examples on the slides, visualize a definition or concept. If you think, it is better in text form, remember it is still on the handout for everybody to read and refer to at anytime, not only during the while the slide is on the screen. This makes slide printouts redundant and you can still upload your presentation to the web for your audience to see. Because a presentation should be experienced, not read!

What do you think about that? I think this approach would make presentations much more effective. It will take more time to create, but I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages here. Text will become more readable, concepts more visual and you will become the master of your presentation. Not the other way round. More on that later.

Please share this posts with those you think will benefit the most from it. From my experience I would say, that this will be true for students and educators, but anyone will essentially benefit. All that it takes, is to understand the true role of a handout.

To wrap up, here are the main features of a handout:

• it's not a printout of your slides
• it comprises text, graphics, tables and other useful information, you would have put onto slides
• it adds value to your presentation by giving additional information and releasing the slides from clutter and non-visual item (namely text)
• it makes a printout of your slides redundant
• it will help your audience to review the presentation, if they chose to look at it another time online, for example

That's it for this week. I hope you found this useful and interesting. Maybe I could open some eyes. Please tell me if you disagree, but make your case.

Have a good week.

Evaluating your presentation

"Thank you for your attention."
"No more questions, thank you."

Applause

It is over now...no its not!

This wasn't probably your last presentation and here is why you should care about a thorough evaluation:

There is always room for improvement!

Here are some suggestions for what you can do after a presentation:

• collect immediate feedback from your audience after your presentation
• just ask them and don't be content with the answer "Yeah, it was good, I guess."
• try to find out what they liked and did not
• don't just ask your mom, if you know what I mean
• in a team - do a feedback session
• students may get an evaluation from their teacher
• ask for clarification and more feedback
• collect all your notes and files you created during the presentation creation process and put them in a folder or portfolio that you can review at anytime
• write a reflection on everything you did, observed and experienced
• what was good?
• what didn't work out at all
• share your presentation
• send your presentation to a mailing list and ask for comments
• share it on platforms such as slideshare.net/ or sliderocket.com
• did you by any chance tape or film your presentation?
• analyze your performance and write down good and bad things you did

Maybe you can think of other ways, to gather feedback. Please comment if you do.

So the bottom line for improvement is, that you have to be cruel in feedback and evaluation. I asked a teacher of mine for feedback once and she asked me if I wanted the kind or the cruel version. I went for cruel. She ripped my work apart. I felt awful. No, the important thing is not to sulk but to sit down and make the necessary changes suggested. After I redid my work, I felt great. I turned my previous work, about which I felt pretty good, into an awesome piece and I am still thankful for that cruel feedback.

Look at previous presentations you created. I like to look back to my high school years where I first encountered PowerPoint. It's mind-boggling. So, you learn with every presentation you make and you should apply your gained knowledge and skills to make your next presentation more effective and engaging.

It's a continuous process, really. Do you remember the first steps you should do when creating a presentation? Yes? Great! No? Go back to my previous posts on Groundrules, Preparation, Research, Design and Delivery to recap the most important principals to consider.

This posts completes my own presentation creation process. The steps are just guidelines for orientation. Every aspect of each step is worth comprising a single step in the process, but that would not make it easy to remember, I guess.

I hope, you liked this little series on this process and found some useful tips you can apply to your next presentation. In the next weeks I will go back to these posts and talk about single topics mentioned in more detail. Please share your opinion about this blog with me by commenting. Feel free to suggest any topic or finding you would like me to talk about.

Have a good week!