Presentation techniques
In the last week I've given a few presentations on different topics for different purposes.
I've given two as part of pre-sales activities and one for internal purposes. For the external presentations both were in conjunction with a business partner and were done using their presentation templates and styles.
Needless to say this was the standard bullet points, lots of text per slide, information transmittal style of template. Whilst it was well received the presentations were successful more due to the presenters and interest levels of the audience than in the content of the slides. Even I found them pretty tedious.
The other presentation I did was an internal one relating to some development process changes I am introducing to tighten up some sloppy work being done by the team. I used a different style, clean and simple, based on ideas from presentation zen with a single line of large-font text or a single word per slide, and lots of slides. It was much more conversational and much more engaging (as well as more fun to present). The presentation lasted for all of 5 minutes, but during that time the team was engaged and the message was clear to them.
I know which style is more effective, and also I know which is harder to present.
The external presentations took only a little longer to put together than they took to present, while the internal one, took much longer to prepare than it did to present. I also had to know my material a lot better for the internal presentation as I couldn't always rely on the text on the slides to prompt me as to what to say next.
I'll keep working on it, but the internal style is definitely one I want to keep improving. Once I'm more comfortable with it internally, I'll try taking it "on the road" and seeing how it goes.
I've given two as part of pre-sales activities and one for internal purposes. For the external presentations both were in conjunction with a business partner and were done using their presentation templates and styles.
Needless to say this was the standard bullet points, lots of text per slide, information transmittal style of template. Whilst it was well received the presentations were successful more due to the presenters and interest levels of the audience than in the content of the slides. Even I found them pretty tedious.
The other presentation I did was an internal one relating to some development process changes I am introducing to tighten up some sloppy work being done by the team. I used a different style, clean and simple, based on ideas from presentation zen with a single line of large-font text or a single word per slide, and lots of slides. It was much more conversational and much more engaging (as well as more fun to present). The presentation lasted for all of 5 minutes, but during that time the team was engaged and the message was clear to them.
I know which style is more effective, and also I know which is harder to present.
The external presentations took only a little longer to put together than they took to present, while the internal one, took much longer to prepare than it did to present. I also had to know my material a lot better for the internal presentation as I couldn't always rely on the text on the slides to prompt me as to what to say next.
I'll keep working on it, but the internal style is definitely one I want to keep improving. Once I'm more comfortable with it internally, I'll try taking it "on the road" and seeing how it goes.