Presentation Technique AIR NAVIGATION INSTITUTE

a free e-learning lecture by Beat Zimmermann

Lecture level AB INITIO

Pre-requisites for this lecture: A tiny bit of humour The will to improve your presentation competencies

The Problem

We all will arrive at a point in life sooner or later when we are asked to present a project, give a speech, lead a briefing, debrief a project or anything you can think of that will require some kind of presentation from our part in front of an audience. The problem is that most people are not trained to do this and therefore are not aware of the common crimes commited out there in the presentation world.

Ask yourself a question

What is a good speech? What is a good presentation? In your memory please take a journey back to a conference or a workshop you attended in the past. Do you remember any of the speakers standing out? Or maybe you had a great lecturer at University. One who stood out of the mass. What was different? What did he do exactly? What did he NOT do? Why exactly did you think it was a great presentation?

The Truth

Let me be honest with you. The sad truth is: About 90% of the presentations given out there by experts about a certain field of their expertise are an absolute nightmare. Most presenters commit so many crimes within an hour that they should be heavily fined for it. What makes me sad is that a lot of people seem to copy the bad stuff out there (instead of copying the good stuff!...) and it never improves. Of course, doing the good stuff takes more time. It takes more effort. But a speech, a presentation is SOMETHING IMPORTANT and that‘s how the speaker has to treat it! Let‘s go through the major crimes in presentation on the next few slides. Later we shall discuss psychological phenomena like stage fright.

Presentation Crime Nr.1 Being funny when you aren‘t funny

I agree: A good laugh during a lecture or a presentation is great. If the presenter is a funny person and he drops a spontaneous (!) joke every now and then, this will greatly enhance his performance. But it is wrong to believe that you can only make an impact when your presentation is full of jokes. Fact is, if you are not a funny person, then don‘t try to be one. You are not Robert de Niro who can change his character like his daily outfit. If a joke comes across rehearsed it will miss the point. If you dropped the same joke at your last speech a year ago, it is lame and if you copied your joke from a presenter you just heard the day before during the conference, you dug yourself a deep hole.

Presentation Crime Nr.2 Reading your speech from a paper

There is nothing to say against a piece of paper with keywords so you don‘t forget anything that you wanted to say. But writing down your whole speech word by word and reading it is a crime. Because your audience wants you to interact. They want you to give them the feeling that you are COMMUNICATING with them. They want the feeling that they inspire you and that if you gave your presentation an hour later to a different audience, it wouldn‘t be exactly the same. Why on earth would you want to write down your whole speech? Aren‘t you an expert in that field? Isn‘t that the reason why you are speaking in the first place? If I go for coffee with you and ask you questions about your field of expertise, will you pull out a page with pre-written answers you can give me?

Presentation Crime Nr.3 Talking to your computer instead of the audience

Your computer or your paper notes are not interested in what you have to say. But your audience is. So speak to them! That also includes: Look at them! Because if you and me go for coffee again and you tell me about your field of expertise, I want you to look at me, at least every now and then.

Presentation Crime Nr.4 Talking to the screen behind you

Stop looking at that screen behind you. You know what‘s there, therefore there is no need to look at it. If you have to explain something on the screen, fine. Point at it but don‘t talk to it. Talk to the audience. If you speak without a microphone the audience will probably tell you, as your voice doesn‘t transfer anymore. If you speak with microphone they can still hear you, but they will feel being ignored nevertheless. Again, you and me having coffee, will you be talking to the painting at the wall behind you all the time?

Presentation Crime Nr.5 Laser Pointers

Let‘s face it: If god had thought that Laser Pointers are good for presentation, our index finger would come with a laser beam. Not only it‘s hard to locate the red point when I sit at the very back of the room, but the way you shake and stir with that pointer makes me dizzy, okay? I you need to explain things on the screen, use an extendable pointer like shown above. There is only one exception to that: If you present in a huge auditorium and the screen is too big for you to reach and point. But that‘s the only exception, okay?

Presentation Software a.k.a: Death by PowerPoint

It is common nowadays to use presentation software to „enhance“ speeches. PowerPoint is one of the software products that are used a lot. Actually it is not such a bad tool. The only problem is that it allows the presenter to commit some of the worst presentation crimes that are known to mankind. Without some basic knowledge about didactics, processing of information in the brain of a student/listener, graphics and typography the use of programs like PowerPoint is a lethal trap. On the next few slides we will look at the presentation crimes specifically related to the use of presentation software.

Presentation Crime Nr.6 Using more than 2 fonts on a slide This is to show all my fonts • For example this one here • Or this one here is quite funky too • How do you like that one? • Ano!er one, nobody has • One that musn't be missing Dr. Siegfried Voegele from Germany did some extensive studies about the reading behaviour of people. He invented an eye-camera allowing to log the eye movements of a reader/listener and also to observe how much time the eye would spend reading a certain item. One of the outcomes are, that more than two fonts on a page are forbidden. Look at a newspaper: They use one font for headlines and one for copy (Copy ist the expression for the text body). That‘s it. They might modify the style of a font in different contexts. For example a font might be bold for the lead-in to the story. Or it might be italic when describing a picture. No more - no less.

Presentation Crime Nr.7 An

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Too many animations

tio Animation excess and other graphical crimes ne xc sem es m ess i irc la r c l cihp an a c i h aragrgr rdehto dna ssecxraepnoitaminA semirc lacihp ehtoot hdena other g Animation excess and other graphical crimes r s d s n e g a ra cxe s s noita e p c x h e minA ica n o i t lc a m i rim An es Presentation software allows you to use animations in any context. Text can be flying in from all over the place, pictures can do the same, the slides can have animated transitions and so on. Generally, the rule of thumb is: HANDS OFF!!! Your slides are not the show, YOU ARE! Animations are effects that should enhance your presentation or emphasize a point. If your presentation is full of animations, the audience gets distracted and bored. Or do you wanna see pictures doing a back flip and seven spirals then wash through the screen before you can actually see the picture?

Presentation Crime Nr.8 Bullet lists/Text That's what I have to say First, I gonna tell you this Then that Of course I am just reading the bullets The next interesting point here By now, you have fallen asleep Now, let's see how I wake you up again Probably not by announcing the next slide, because that will be as boring as this one

Simply the worst thing you can do. If I want to read, I will buy a newspaper, okay? More than 15 words on a slide are a criminal offense. I have counted 70 sometimes... Presenters should be forced to donate 100 Euro to a charity for each bullet list they use. I will give some further information about text in slides during the presentation later (Cognitive Load Theory). For the moment let‘s just apprieciate the following fact: The audience doesn‘t want to read, okay?! So forget your text and bullet lists and get some pictures or graphics out that will assist what you have to SAY. It‘s a speech, remember?

Why no bullet lists?

If you are trying to pack let's say 5 or 6 bullets on a slide you tend to pack way too much information on that slide. Consider dedicating one slide to each bullet and illustrate it with a picture. You will comply with 2 things that way: You won't have more than 15 words on a slide and you won't overload the listener's cognitive system with too much information. See above how you can replace bullets effectively.

Presentation Crime Nr.9 Saying exactly what‘s written on the slide

We just learnt that more than 15 words on a slide are a no-go to start with. The Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, University of New South Wales) explains why it is a problem when a speaker says the same words that are written on a slide that accompanies the speech. The brain cannot process the same information from two different sources (same words spoken and written). Therefore it will lead to an overload and the brain will be confused and doesn‘t know which source to follow. As a result, your information vaporizes in no man's land. You will lose your audience after about 3 slides.

Presentation Crime Nr.10 The „Questions“ slide at the end

For this one I just have 4 words to say: Give me a break! Who started this anyway? It‘s okay to indicate the end of a presentation but can‘t you think of something a bit more original than a slide saying „questions“?

Presentation Crime Nr.11 The Footer The footer - at least SOME useful info Not only I bore you with my bullet lists I also annoy you with too much text Certainly I read from the screen And of course I give you too little time to read it all Finally I put a footer on every slide, so you remember where you are during the whole show. And yes, the date is also extremely important. The dreadful presentations seminar - Dull City 3.-5. May 2008 - page 7/1034

By having a footer, you give away precious space on the slide you might need for graphics. Do you really think it is necessary for the audience to read „PBN Seminar, Montreal June 12-15, 2007“ on every slide? Don‘t you think they know where they are? Or is your presentation so boring that you want to help the audience figuring out where they fell asleep when they eventually wake up?

Presentation Crime Nr.12 The Slide Background

Again, the slides are not the show. It‘s okay to have a background to your slides, just watch some graphical rules. It must not be too „wild“ or „active“, as it will make the eyes of the listeners tired. Furthermore, the color scheme used must be eye-friendly. Again the background musn‘t distract from content. Don‘t change the colorscheme throughout the presentation.

Presentation Crime Nr.13 Too many slides in a given time

If you count 1 slide per 3 minutes of speech, that is more than enough. Again, it is what you have to say, rather than what you have to show that is the essential of the presentation. If that wasn‘t the case, why are you standing there anyway? Your audience hears and sees your presentation for the first time. They must process input from 2 different sources simultaneously, which is not that easy, so give them some time.

Audience Crime Nr.1 „Thanks for your excellent presentation“

Statements from the floor like „thanks for your excellent presentation“ or „good job, Mark“ or anything along those lines are an insult to the speaker and unfortunately, in most cases aren‘t true anyway. Only a few presentations out there are actually excellent and believe me, the guys who deliver them know that they are good, they won‘t need your comment about it. When you make a comment like this, it actually means: „Of course I would have done it better, but for a presentation from you - hey, it was actually not too bad!“ So if you have something to say, then say it. But please no remarks relating to the presentation quality.

Audience Crime Nr.2 I am here therefore I must say something Man, I am important! Let me think of something to say at the end of this. Hmmm, no matter what, just to make sure those guys here know I am here.

Sometimes at the end of a presentation somebody from the floor will say "I don't have a question but a remark to make" and then he gives the whole nine yards about why is so important but what he says has nothing to do with the presentation give at all. My comment: Don't. You are there to learn something eventually and not to express your frustration that it wasn't you up there on the podium. You were in the audience and nobody noticed? So what?

The Deal Watch out, I am watching you!

If I know of somebody who downloaded this lecture and I witness his or her presentation, you commit to paying 5 Euro per "crime" committed in to a fund that we will donate to a charity at the end of each calender year. Deal? I knew you would agree...

made on Apple Keynote Concept and realisation by Beat Zimmermann © 2008 Air Navigation Institute Please copy and distribute as much as you can!