Reignite your presentations, revitalise your lectures

With preparation, quality media, and a meaningful message you too can deliver a powerful presentation


Author: Kate Jurd

Prepare your message
Prepare your supporting media
Prepare your delivery

Dont start with the slides

Use a whiteboard, sheet of paper or post it notes

Put down the key ideas you want to get across to your audience


Keep it simple - dont fill your talk with too many ideas and divergent pathways.

Once your have got everything down - structure your ideas into themes with the important and nice to have

Then start cutting - cut back all the nice to have and keep the important

Why is this topic significant to you?

Why is this topic significant or relevant to your audience?

How can your topic/message help the audience, inspire them, help them generate new ideas and new possibilities?

Help them CHANGE their thinking.

You want them to learn from your experience, your challenges, your insight.... and to inspire them to go onto greater things…

What is remarkable or unique about what you are going to say?

Is there something 'new' about this topic which will lead participants into new ideas that they may never have considered?

What is the key message you want them to walk away with?

Know your audience.

Your talk is not about you - it's about the audience.

What are their needs, what do they need to know?

Are there mixed levels from novice through to expert?

Are there likely to be participants from different fields?

Are any of your colleagues attending? Ask them what they are expecting from your talk.

The art of storytelling - narrative, conversational

Definition of a story:
"A character-based narration of a character's struggles to overcome obstacles and reach an important goal" (Kendall Haven, Story Proof).

Your story has structure: a beginning, middle and end. Structure helps build your narrative:

1. Commence with a strong opening.
You only have a few minutes at the beginning of the presentation to 'hook' the audience, to get their attention.
(Don't waste time listing the 27 objectives of your talk)

2. Interesting middle - the middle of your story may cover the obstacles, the alternatives, the path you followed and the insights along the way.

A good story is a mixture of logic, data, emotion and inspiration (Andrew Stanton)

3. Ending
Powerful finish - if your audience only remembers one thing ...what will it be?

Look for emotional impact!

Something the audience can relate to or identify with. It may be a significant challenge/s that they face.

You can set the scene with a personal experience - one that might tug at their heart strings.

Hint: a powerful image can set the scene with your opening statement.

Add wonder to your talk.

Let the audience use their imaginations

Use visual voice, media and imagery to represent:
- your hook (motivational)
- your message
- your ideas

The overall look and feel or visual voice:
1. Design elements that reflect the topic
- colour
- fonts
- images
- graphs

2. Alignment:
Being consistent with the placement of elements on the screen, effective use of white space to reduce clutter - and reduce cognitive load.

See the principles presented by Garr Reynolds:
http://www.presentationzen.com/

Your slides should visually reinforce what you are saying - they don't repeat what you are saying.

Images make concepts digestible.

The combination of images and oral speech will assist your audience to interpret, to comprehend and learn from the material being presented.

Be mindful of copyright.

Create your own images.

Use images of real people, relevant to topic/or field.

Images that the audience can identify with - and that can evoke emotion.

Authentic – use real photos of real people, moments that speak to human experience. Look at the instagram site humans of New York – what emotions do they evoke?

Arouse an instant gut reaction:
- relevant to your audience
- relevant to their situations
- relevant to their aspirations

That's why they have come to hear you speak.

Sensory
Zoom up close, capture the wrinkles, the texture, the feeling.

White or black background

Alignment of elements

Less is better – easier to process and reduces the cognitive load.

Remember, visual content helps process the information - reduces cognitive load and at the same time connects and engages the audience.

Remove the non essential information, text, images from slides and your talk.

Remove everything that has no relevance to the story.

Clip art is cheap and nasty, and reduces the quality of your presentation.

Standard stock photos are common and boring and your audience has probably seen them before.
#stockphotosfail

PowerPoint templates and themes are also common.

You don't need to include your company logo - the audience knows who you are, so they don't need to be reminded about your company on every slide of your presentation.

Clip art is cheap and nasty, and reduces the quality of your presentation.

Standard stock photos are common and boring and your audience has probably seen them before.
#stockphotosfail

PowerPoint templates and themes are also common.

You don't need to include your company logo - the audience knows who you are, so they don't need to be reminded about your company on every slide of your presentation.

Avoid

Animations are distracting giddy gismos, or can be tedious and slow. Have you ever sat through a presentation and waited for every word (or worse still every letter) to fly onto the screen - remember the typewriter animation or the swirl, bounce and spin?

Transitions - only use if subtle (i.e. dont use more than 2 or 3 different styles of transitions) and not between every slide.

Lists only work for shopping" (ffolliet)

Ref:http://ffolliet.com/2016/09/19/lists-only-work-for-shopping)

Don't be tempted to add bullet points/text to your slides
this will only draw the audience attention away from you as they concentrate on reading your slides.

#deathbybulletpoint

What ever you do don't read your slides, the audience can read faster than you can!

If you have detailed information don't put it on the slide, provide a handout or direct the audience to a website.

Better still insert tweet reference to article, your blog or website.

Avoid

Animations are distracting giddy gismos, or can be tedious and slow. Have you ever sat through a presentation and waited for every word (or worse still every letter) to fly onto the screen - remember the typewriter animation or the swirl, bounce and spin?

Transitions - only use if subtle (i.e. dont use more than 2 or 3 different styles of transitions) and not between every slide.

Lists only work for shopping" (ffolliet)

Ref:http://ffolliet.com/2016/09/19/lists-only-work-for-shopping)

Don't be tempted to add bullet points/text to your slides
this will only draw the audience attention away from you as they concentrate on reading your slides.

#deathbybulletpoint

What ever you do don't read your slides, the audience can read faster than you can!

If you have detailed information don't put it on the slide, provide a handout or direct the audience to a website.

Better still insert tweet reference to article, your blog or website.

Its all about the story and how you deliver it

- show a clear conflict
- demonstrate a clear change
- show or do the unexpected
- make the audience 'feel'
(Garr Reynolds)

Be confident with your material - telling a story makes it easier to remember your content

Hand gestures are good but don't over do it.

Make eye contact with your audience, get close to them

Move away from the podium

Avoid pacing back and forth

Be authentic

Tell the audience how you feel, tell them why this is so important to you, why it interests you, why it excites you – your honesty and passion are valued by the audience.

If it's something you care about the passion shows naturally.

Use your voice, tone and pitch to emphasise elements of your story.

Use silence or a long pause after an important statement.

Show your passion.

Show your personality.

Your delivery, projection:
- Be enthusiastic - beaming, eyes lit up
- Heartfelt belief in what you say
- A confident strong tone.

Remember non-verbal elements:
Vivid facial expression - this will change depending on where you are in your story - looks of pride, sadness, disappointment, happiness will add impact to your delivery.
- Smile - it's powerful!

Never face your screen or turn your back on the audience.

Never read your slides.
It's not powerpoint karaoke!

Practice, Practice, Practice

- in front of the mirror
- in front of a friend, colleague, partner

Arrive early.

Check the technology.

Always have a plan B if the technology fails.

Feedback after the event

Check evaluation feedback from conference organisers (if collected)

Ask a colleague to attend and critique your presentation.

Seek advice from a professional coach.


See
Improving your presentation mojo - article from emupdates.com

Image source: http://emupdates.com/2016/09/20/rehearse-on-a-sheet-of-newspaper-an-acting-...

Kate Jurd @katejurd
Learning Technologist/eLearning Specialist
(Medical Education, Toowoomba Hospital)
see Linkedin profile: www.linkedin.com/in/kate-jurd-32689a31


This acknowledgement goes to those who have influenced, motivated and inspired the development and creation of this presentation.

To learn more :
Garr Reynolds
http://www.garrreynolds.com/

Ross Fisher @ffolliet
P Cubed Presentations http://ffolliet.com/

Victoria Brazil
http://www.slideshare.net/oliflower/victoria-brazil-present-better-with-tec...

Natalie Lafferty: Presentations and learning
https://digitalteacherssc.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/presentation-and-learnin...

www.emupdates.com

Talk like TED
http://www.slideshare.net/cvgallo/talk-liketed-slideshare-fina-lck