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Ask Slashdot: How To Give IT Presentations That Aren't Boring?
Dmitri Baughman writes "I'm the IT guy at a small software development company of about 100 employees. Everyone is technically inclined, with disciplines in development, QA, and PM areas. As part of a monthly knowledge-sharing meeting, I've been asked to give a 30-minute presentation about our computing and networking infrastructure. I manage a pretty typical environment, so I'm not sure how to present the information in a fun and engaging way. I think network diagrams and bandwidth usage charts would make anyone's eyes glaze over! Any ideas for holding everyone's interest?"
Pizza automatically makes any meeting fun.
Car analogies, lots of them!
Oh for crying out loud! You have been asked to review a topic, provide useful information such as an overview and where to find more details.
Talk about future plans. Turn it into a discussion on additional needs.
Being entertaining is not a requirement.
And don't forget your RDF generator!
Seriously, like him or hate him Jobs could present the most mundane subject and have people clamoring for more, so maybe follow his technique.
...strippers. Problem solved.
Fire one person at the end of every presentation.
Walk around. Vary the intonation of your voice. If you need to use PowerPoint, don't make it text heavy, but just put up the brief points you want them to memorize.
I give 10 or 20 workshops every year around the country, and I can usually capture the interest of an audience without needing PowerPoint.
Perhaps, this will help? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ntLGOyHw4
Make up a bunch of cards with servers names, routers, etc.. all the infrastructure pieces.. then hand them out randomly as people come in..once everyone is in.. make them recreate the system.. maybe get some string for wires.. make it physical, involve the participants and it wont be boring..
Seriously. Especially if you find ones that are relevant to the topic at hand.
I work in an academic genomics laboratory, and our tech staff are on the lab meeting rotation schedule. What they generally spend that time doing is presenting tutorials on interesting things you can do with our computational and networking infrastructure. For example, our admin implemented a really slick remote access server (Sun-branded, I think) and it was a nice chance for him to give a live demo of something that, at this point, a lot of us find useful. (Also a good chance for him to show us that he was earning his keep!) I agree with your assessment, though - avoid the utilization charts.
...and use examples outside of the world of IT to make it.
The very worst thing I see when someone opens a presentation is "Slide 1 of 50+". If you do want to use slides, use them as a guide only. A single picture is lots better than 20 bullet points. And for heavens sake, Do Not Read The Text To Us!!!
Make sure you know your subject, prepare 4 slides max and talk about your subject. Start with a question or quiz to engage your audience. Trick them into a 'Duh...' moment. Get interactive and don't be afraid to say "I don't know"...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
You shouldn't be trying to figure out how not to bore your coworkers. You should be trying to figure out how to drive them insane with boredom. They must be punished.
And lots of it. Sexist and shallow, I know. For all you gals out there, well get some hunks out there too so you're not left out. Give your local Hooters a call and see if they will cater. They won't remember the whole point of the meeting anyways and you'll no doubt get the funding you need. Epic win!
I'm kidding of course. Well, sorta.
And people wonder why HR dept hates me.
Life is not for the lazy.
Strippers.
It seems to work for the sales guys in Vegas...
That is all.
Record a video of yourself giving the presentation. You will see the some areas you can work on. Put the video on YouTube and ask your friends/family for feedback.
Just keep it simple, minimize the number of PowerPoint slides, and brief things that may be relevant to the audience. Analogies always help so the "car analogies" comment is a good tip. I used to teach satellite communications principles and theory (e.g. orbital mechanics, decibels, satellite antenna design, RF propogation - all boring stuff) and noticed once PowerPoint was turned off and I interacted with everyone they recovered from their comas and things went well. You don't need to be a comic, juggler, clown, etc. Just keep it simple and stop at 30 minutes.
Simply take off one article of clothing every five minutes.
Write failed: Broken pipe
Go to Amazon.com pick up the set of three laser pointers (has one red, one green, and one blue violet) the set of three is less than $30. Blue Lasers dont show up as birght to human eyes, but work great for presantations to get people to check out the screen. I find when i mix up using the green and blue between hot points in topics it catches their eye. hard to be a technphile and not turn your head to check out a shinny laser dot ;-)
Head on over and pick up some great jamming music. with a tech side. example Sound Tribe Sector 9, they are great and use PCs to make a lot of the music but also play real instruments over the techno type tracks. If you end up playing some Flight of the Concords in the mix you will sure get there heads off the table laughing.
I was in one on Microsoft's campus with people from various companies, and this one douche thought he was being very clever by repeatedly using Chef Emeril Lagasse's "BAM!" schtick. People laughed the first time. After that the boredom was replaced by irritated hostility.
I'd show your firewall logs. Most people have never seen them, and it has the added benefit of showing management that you are vital to protecting the system.
Of course, there's a chance they may freak and insist on a 100% cracker-proof network... Only you can judge what sort of people you work with.
Find out what people _want_ to learn about before your monthly presentation, then prepare with that in mind. Or poll people at the end of your presentation. Or do 15 minute topic presentation + 15 minute QA / open forum for people to ask about anything.
Use humour.
This is business, not a stand up routine. If you want to have a good presentation:
1) Limit your audience to those who need/want to know what you're presenting
2) Tell them what you know concisely and clearly.
3) Do not get bogged down in details or let people rathole.
4) Have good answers for the questions people are likely to have.
The real question you should be asking is why you're holding this event to begin with if everyone attending has no interest in the material? It just sounds like a thirty minute waste of everyone's time or just a way to make you feel like you're contributing more or something.
While there are certainly things you can do to make it more interesting (relate it to their day to day, average e-mails sent per employee, average pages accessed in a day, etc) you really can't do the impossible without making the entire presentation about something else entirely.
My only suggestion would be to not "read from the slides." Material should either be coming out of your mouth OR on the slides, never both. It is fine to describe a graph on the screen or a diagram, it is horrible to read out a paragraph of text.
Whatever you do, don't mix sarcasm with good clip-art. I worked with a sales exec who wanted to ship laptopa that shot lightning.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
If you can describe what features and benefits various aspects of your systems have for the people you're addressing, that might help. Hearing figures and specs about the computers and network would put me to sleep. Hearing what I can do because of them might just get me interested, though.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Be informative and brief. It's not like people go into meetings like that looking for a standup act or to be entertained. Want to make people happy, get your information across and get them the hell out of their early.
Maybe Prezi will help with the boring topic? Keep people's eyes engaged?
Also, the 10-20-30 rule has always worked pretty well for me. 10 slides. 20 minutes. 30 point font.
Play buzzword bingo. Give prizes for winners.
take the time you would spend making a pretty powerpoint and put that into making the content worthwhile
Why is your audience there? What are they interested in knowing, and what is you required to show?
If it is a knowledge sharing meeting, they probably don't want to know the details of your infrastructure. Talk about limitations (and, of course, a very high level view of the network), plans for future, bothlenecks, how things affect them.
Rethinking email
I once was assigned a performance tuning presentation to do at a conference. The subject matter was really, really boring. To spice it up, I turned it into a David Letterman top 10 list of things to do. Each item on the list was preceded by a "joke" item that had something to do with the item I was going to talk about. It went over very well.
Follow the 10 foot rule (Make sure everybody can see a presentation at least 10 feet away).
As for structuring a presentation start with the general then move into the specifics.
But most of all remember giyf.
Hope that helps.
God bless.
What do you want your audience to think, feel and do? Decide this at the start, and then you'll be able to judge whether you've succeeded in the end. Unfortunately, "Sharing information" is the lowest form of presentation (the highest is a call to action - "Attack!") so if that's all you're doing, it a tough row to hoe.
Start with a grabber - something funny, or a question.
Then tell them what you're going to tell them. This doesn't have to be an agenda slide, you can do it verbally. This sets the context and tells your team that there will be an end!
Give them the content. This can be in the form of slides, or visual aids. Remember, you are the presenter, not the slides. Look at TED talks and you'll see it is the person everyone is looking at and not the slide. Practice standing still and talking to people in the audience. If you have to read off your slides, do it silently for a few seconds, then turn and face the audience and speak. Stand to the left of the screen if you can from the audience's perspective so they'll naturally move their eyes to you (In English we read from the left).
For content, I *really* recommend pictures and no text, or very sparse text. Just get rid of all the text and you'll be free to talk about the picture how you like. If you put up text, people will read it instead of looking and listening to you. The Ignite style, or PechaKucha (http://www.pecha-kucha.org/) styles are very awesome and exciting if you want to give them a go. I use www.gettyimages.com as a source - it's a great search engine for emotive pictures. For internal use, screw copyright, just take anything and blow it up BIG (full bleed, no titles).
Finish with a call to action slide that drives home what you want the team to think feel and do after they walk out the door. Don't be afraid to ask for something too, or for something they should consider. After all, if there is no point to what you've just said, then why bother?
One last point - being told to do a presentation for 30 minutes is an artificial constraint. Will your boss really be upset if you take 10 minutes and get the message across? I've had to do presentations to extremely busy people and had 5 minutes or less and done that with terrific success. The time should not be what you consider - if there's time left over, call it discussion time or Q&A. If there's no discussion or Q&A, maybe you need to be a bit more provocative or thought-provoking in what you are saying.
Good luck!
If you are like the typical IT guy start off with all the shit you changed that breaks existing methods and software that developers use. Finish it up with a pinata that the developers can take their anger out on.
Explosions and shaky cam.
Once a month we do a brownbag where people come in and do presentations. It's voluntary and fun.
The best thing to do is to have toys to show off. Just recently I walked around with a "coupon", an 8" diameter chunk of steel cut from a pipe. This let me talk about water pressure, safety (there's 4,000 lbs of force behind that coupon in a waterline) and give everyone a visual of that thing coming loose and whacking someone in the face. Perhaps not related, but it let me segue into our control system, and 25 miles of fiberoptic cable, and control infrastructure that lets us control our water delivery throughout 250 miles of waterlines.
Tell stories, illustrate your points with real world events. Don't dwell on statistics or numbers; talk about what those numbers mean and why they're important.
Yes, you are an entertainer. At least if you want to keep your audience from falling asleep.
I give random lectures for IT students in their first semesters.
I make them bring their small programs (e.g. a calculator) they have written in another course. I tell them to remove their names from the code so nobody gets embarrassed.
Then I spend 2 hours optimizing their code and giving commentary.
They love it.
They come with Java and C. Also C++. I like to show them how to emulate C++ in C then by porting it to C.
etc.
A lot hinges on how you behave. Like others said before me, intonation is a must. Body language is also important: hands apart, open posture, eye contact, get out from behind the podium. You don't want to present a shield to the audience.
Slides: use graphics to make it interesting, maybe a network architecture demo from PacketTracer (I find it has nice, friendly icons representing the devices), and other visual aids. Handouts may be used if you plan to impart a lot of information.
Don't shy away from the occasional joke, if you think you can get away with it, just make sure they're not groaners! I find that the "Death by Powerpoint" image macro works well as an ice breaker when included in the beginning, right after you outline the presentation, with a comment like "[...] And this is what I hope my presentation won't turn out to be!"
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
http://sozi.baierouge.fr/wiki/en:welcome
"[...] not organized as a slideshow, but rather as a poster where the content of your presentation can be freely laid out [...] series of translations, zooms and rotations [...]"
It's GPL 3.0 software and it's an extension for Inkscape.
A co-worker of mine would insert fun little animations and/or funny graphics which represented what he wanted to get across. It was just enough fun not to be distracting but keep you awake and reading while giving a little chuckle.
Analytics are great but they're boring as hell. Have some fun with video whenever you can - it can be a little cumbersome to make but it will liven things up quite a bit. Also, incorporate guest speakers. IT's great but it's pretty consistent through most industries. Bring in people from other departments to talk about exactly what they do and how IT helps them. It provides alot of perspective that you might not see on your day to day. Also, share knowledge. If someone in your department does something cool - let them tell everyone about it.
Oh, and free food. Always have free food.
With blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the meeting!
Don't go for "this is a bit, this is a byte, these are wires, this is the boring-ass stuff I do all day" type thing. You'd be looking at it wrong.
You're running the shop for them, so tell them what they can do with it. Highlight something, say a neat wiki where they can share all sorts of information (and oh look you've pre-loaded with fun HOW TOs about getting common tasks done more efficiently), and take'em on a tour, show'em there's stuff around they can use they mightn't know existed.
Shit, you get a wonderful opportunity to plug how fscking useful you are for the company and you have to ask, "now what"? Now you make it a roaring success so you get a fixed slot each month to show off what neat stuff you've done for the company this time.
Yes, really. Bring candy, handouts and don't forget one humorous story in the first third, and a joke right before the final conclusion. People like stories, especially if they're in context with the presentation. It gives the less technical people something to relate to when all you're doing is spewing numbers about money saved and man hours reduced. The candy amps up their blood sugar so they stay awake, and the handout is so they have something to reference if they fall behind in the presentation, or try to remember what you said later.
moox. for a new generation.
horrible imo.
don't give a presentation. there, that was easy.
Talk to some of the people not in your department and ask them what they would like to hear about.
/this/months/firewall/messages and let 'er scroll), but statistics and things like that. Do something about how to make easy to remember passwords. Do a presentation about what your department does all day. Many people don't really see what the IT people do all day. So show them a graph of all the tickets your dept handled all year, along with the projects you accomplished.
And I also like the idea above about logs. Not screenfulls of actual logs (unless for visual effect: cat
Why not make it interactive by using interactive response devices, that is, clickers? They aren't applicable for every type of presentation but if you are looking for feedback from the staff, they can work very well. Sure, a set might set your company back a few thousand dollars but they work pretty good for keeping your audience awake.
You can try cell phone polling alternatives if you want to save a buck as well but the cell phone polling option does not go over so well with some folks. They just don't want to be bothered to pull out their cell phone unless they are texting someone.
I'm not sure if they will work in conjunction with pizza & hot wings during a lunch presentation.
Organize the talk by their jobs. Show them how it all works when they do what they do, and where it's most likely to fail or slow down when they do various things. You'll probably go back to a couple of key slides frequently as you move from one major job type to another, but you'll adapt to your listeners. Everybody is interested in themselves. For a big finish show them how all their jobs move together in the common system. Avoid the natural mistake of organizing it by your own job.
That's boring. Tell them what it does for them, and how they benefit. Your goals are:
* Make the devs think you give them value-added service that makes it more likely they'll get their work done without unnecessary hassle, and less likely that an accident or an oops will get them in deep shit.
* Make management think you're giving them good value, while taking prudent steps to minimize risk and maximize opportunity.
Summary: make them think you (and your infrastructure) make them more likely to succeed, and less susceptible to risk. That makes you look valuable.
captcha: screwed
Lots of posts are talking about having good subject material, but I think they are missing the mark. It's not good enough to have fun, or interesting material, but it also has to be material that is suited to a presentation. Anyone who's taken a class where a professor just droned on reading powerpoint slides knows that teaching material to people via a presentation does not work well at all, for instance. One of the fun ones in corporate america is the "reason for outage" presentation, that sort of material does not fit well in presentation form either, most of the time.
Your audience has to be interested not only by the information you are communicating, but also by the way in with you present it. When you watch an Apple Keynote it's not that they do anything earth shattering, but everyone wants to know what the next gizmo is, and a plain picture on the screen and a one paragraph description read aloud keeps them enthralled! Think about interesting tech presentations, people flock to (the external version of) why things failed presentations. When Facebook/Google/Yahoo/Microsoft get up and talk about these events there is interest before the presentation in the topic, and the people listening aren't interesting in assigning blame (which is why the RFO corporate ones don't work). They are fascinated by a window into your world.
I fear the OP is off on the wrong foot. If the environment is "bog standard" and you're presenting to technical folks you're already in trouble. If 10% of the room could sit down and take a wild ass guess at what you're doing based on industry standards, and that is in fact, what you're doing, no one is going to care about your material no matter how much you try and jazz up the slides. The OP needs to think about the questions the other 99 people in the company ask all the time, and how to answer them in a fun and interesting way. It's the questions you dismiss all the time:
"At my last job we did X, and it seemed better, why don't we do that here?"
"Why does the IT staff always take a 2 hour lunch on thursday?"
"Why are you guys Windows fanboys, and hate OSX?"
The people are already telling you what they are interested in knowing. Those are the topics they will find interesting and engaging. Those are the things you need to present.
giggity
Read this:
http://www.slideshare.net/eduruiz8/death-by-power-point-presentation
This is a short and sweet classic on how to make an engaging presentation. It will not help you if you're a boring, antisocial and mumbling clerk, though.
Regards,
Ruemere
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks.html I watched Nancy in a smaller venue but she did the same talk for TED. The link is above. Essentially you have to understand that people have acknowledged that you can tell them something. This immediately puts you on a pedestal - but that is a good thing, let me explain. They have invited you to tell them a story at the end of which they want to feel good about your position on a certain matter (the topic of your presentation). Even the most technically inclined are only slightly looking forward to you spilling every little detail about the topic. They want big take-aways. This is why being on a pedestal is good. They WANT to pay attention - but humans tend to pay attention to gestalt not minutiae in such circumstances. They like stories, they like to be told you've got everything under control. You'll lose them if you get into the nitty-gritty just like you'll lose kids if you start telling them the little piggy use quick-setting concrete because, in your estimation the wolf was about 25-30 minutes away, which would rule out ... You catch my drift (I don't know too much about construction but that was the first story that cam to my mind).
Don't overload your slides - 3-5 main points per slide, 7-10 slides. If you have to put in more info then either email them the desk with annotations or handout a document for them to review.
So go watch the video and then remember to tell your story - the geeks and nerds will always be at hand to squeeze the juicy details out of you via a Q&A at the end.
Don't force yourself to be entertaining, most people easily recognise a forced presentation. Same goes for boring, if you think your presentation is boring - it will be boring. Find things that capture YOUR interest in your material - if you find it interesting, you'll project it to your audience better. Even if the material itself seems boring, think of anecdotes, I'm not an IT guy, but I'm sure there are stories where things failed, a mouse that ate through the cables, the janitor who used a computer case as the base for his mop, show how it relates to your diagrams and sketches. Think of user stories (not necessarily in the same company if it's embarrassing...), and if all else fails there're always water guns for the sleepy audience members...
'nough said.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Do really off the wall things, keeps the audience involved and a bit fearful. Then they'll pay attention.
Five minutes into the presentation, suddenly step back, scream Rahr at the top of your lungs, then continue on with the presentation as if nothing happened.
Fall on the floor and twitch mumbling in a scared child's voice "Mommy, don't the the monster get me!". Get back up, keep presenting as if nothing happened.
Walk up to the biggest guy in the room, clock him square in the nose. Laugh. Keep presenting.
Fart loudly.
Pick your nose.
Praise Jesus!
Stop talking and just look at everyone strangely, as if you are fully confused.
Jump up and down a couple times and begin speaking in tongues. Seem very impressed with whatever you said in tongues.
Tell them about the baby bird you found when you were little.
Run from the room screaming.
don't focus on bandwidth, focus on % of bandwidth devoted to porn, day to day and week to week.
Run driftnet.
Give everyone a look at what everyone's been downloading.
Although it's been said a million times before, it's relevant also here and not obviously so.
There are, broadly speaking, two ways one can approach a job. One path is the "job security" path. Hoard information. Hide passwords. Make yourself indispensable. The other path is to continually "make yourself dispensable" by sharing and documenting all information you gather. You create value for your company by continually learning and gathering more information to share.
You've posed your question regarding this "information sharing" as a company requirement. No, this is your opportunity to take the latter (and better) path described above.
First slide of your PowerPoint is a bus about to run over a pedestrian and this is where you introduce the concept of the "bus number". You frighten everyone in the room by announcing that the company has a bus number of one and that you, the speaker, are all that stands between prosperity and collapse at the company. Next slide is a photo of someone handing out candy or gifts to everyone in a crowd and is titled "Sharing".
What are you sharing? Since this is the first presentation, not a lot of detail. First thing you are sharing is the location of your "In case of IT death, look in this directory." Don't have one yet? Make one before your presentation. It should have a "README.1ST" and a concise set of documents with passwords and network diagrams. You know, those things you were (rightly) loathe to put into your presentation.
Next topic for this first presentation are FAQs. How people can fix the printer for themselves. How people can check the status of available DHCP IP's for themselves. Etc. Make people independent to give yourself more time to learn even more things. Like maybe stuff about e-mail servers, VPN's, CRM, or website design. Don't stand still!
Do you realize how valuable this opportunity is and how much it's costing your company? A salesman, like, say, an insurance salesman, would pay big bucks for such an opportunity, and you're getting it for free! Use it to:
Make yourself dispensable. It's the way to create value. 30 minutes is an enormous gift. Spend it wisely.
First thing you do is drop powerpoint. Don't start it up and open an empty presentation and then start to think what to put on the slides.
Work without slides. Focus on what you want to say. If there are diagrams, etc. - anything halfway complicated - make a handout instead of slides, because people won't remember the slides anyways, but they can take the handout with them and keep it as reference.
There are some cases, such as a demo or a walkthrough, where slides are useful, but most presentations can do entirely without, if only they were more interesting.
If you have something to say, you're already halfway there to an interesting presentation. If you are just giving a presentation because you were asked, and you think your topic boring yourself, then you need to get to the "something to say" step first. Find out what makes your job interesting. There must be something, or you wouldn't be doing it.
A good presentation doesn't try to say everything about its subject matter. It concentrates on the interesting, cool and/or important stuff and only hints at the fact that there's so much more.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If you're an attractive female, short revealing skirt; otherwise it's physically to make a presentation less boring.
Talk to the participants beforehand. Ask about their pain points. Put up a survey with a few ideas for a presentation, then do the one with the most votes. See what the audience wants to hear. Show them stuff that will make their jobs easier.
No more than 10-15 slides
Don't read the slides. They should just reinforce what you're talking about. If possible, no slides. Simply show a few realtime applications as you are talking.
"Here is our current server load." "Here is the realtime, right now, network traffic between Omaha and Tacoma." Or whatever. There are dangers in doing this, but if you can, it can be quite powerful.
Above all, don't let your boss change the presentation the day before. I had this happen. Short slide deck ready to go...rehearsing several days before. She altered/inserted slides to show what SHE thought it should convey. I had about 2 hours notice. Not good. I managed.
Nice try. I'd laugh in your face.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Definitely.
Understand your audience. Work out what they're going to be interested in.
Don't tell them bandwidth stats. Tell them who is using your site, how much, what for, and then use that to explain the bandwidth patterns and usage. The fact that peak bandwidth usage is at 5-7pm and hits X is relevant to business people, and X should be pages/minute not mbps. That you can also note that each page is on average Y in size means you can correlate page views to bandwidth, and also demonstrate opportunities to improve site performance by reducing the size of key frequently accessed pages.
So suddenly one boring stat has become an insight into your customers, your site, the implications of various design choices and an opportunity to improve.
That's relevant, that's interesting to a professional audience, and that's adding value to the organisation.
If you're serious -- try to find a local Toastmasters club.
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
EVIL I say.
Not for the boss, not for yourself, not for the topic. For the people who sit there. It may sound logical, but it's rarely really the case.
Of course you're making the presentation because your boss wants you to. Or because you actually want to. Neither is important. It's not even important what you want to transport. If you cannot reach your audience, everything else is moot.
Don't mix and match if there's any chance. If you toss programmers together with marketing people and do a presentation about IT, you're going to fail. No matter what you do. You will either bore the programmers or talk over the heads of the markedroids. And either means that they will simply "shut down" and mentally leave your presentation.
Get them involved. This not only "forces" them to be attentive but it also gives you immediate feedback whether they actually understand what you try to tell them. Try to turn it from a monologue into a dialogue and maybe a discussion. Listen to their questions (and I don't mean the standard token "if you have any questions please ask" crap), watch their faces, you will see when someone has a question, actively get them to ask them. People sometimes don't dare to ask, either because they fear that they will appear "stupid" for not understanding something or because they are afraid to either piss off you or their peers, you, because you might not want to answer questions and their peers because they want to get out of the presentation.
Powerpoint. Use it sparingly, or leave it out altogether. It got old ages ago. No matter how you spin, flip or animate the crap, nobody gives half a shit about it anymore. If there's any chance, use pictures instead. Depending on your corporate culture, a "shock and awe" approach can be very useful to get your point across. I once had a presentation about IT security where I used the husk of a computer that was detonated with C4 as a metaphor for a hack, trust me, it struck a chord and it stuck. People usually enjoy looking at pictures that make them go "wtf-omg", at least a LOT more than looking at bulleted lists, and those bullet lists never got my point across at least anyway. You can hand them the documents if you are so inclined, but don't lecture it to them. You may do a lot with your audience, but you must not bore them or they will mentally take a stroll through their happy place while they park their carcass in front of you.
And most of all, keep it practical. They have to have the feeling that they can take something out of this meeting that helps them in their job. Try to stay away from theoretic drivel, it bores them. They don't like computers, at least not necessarily. They also aren't really interested in your job, or they would have chosen your career instead of theirs. And most of all, they don't give a damn about how you do something, why you do something and often not even why they should do it. Give them something practical and something that makes their life easier and they'll gladly listen and take your advice. Depending on the support you have from your higher-ups, you could have them toss something "bad" at your audience and let you come in as the one to save the day. To give you an idea what I mean, a little anecdote. I once was tasked to get the new ITSEC rules to our staff. It would be approximately 50 pages of rather dry and very technical stuff per user, something you can't easily sell. My boss helped me by first demanding that everyone reads and heeds everything, even the parts that don't apply to them, totaling about 500 pages. In a nutshell, when I was offering meetings that showed them how to prune it to just 50 pages per team, they were quite eager to come.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Please do not do that. I have had to endure far too many of those. It is bad enough when it is your own department or field.
When it is a different department or field then ALL you are doing is pissing people off. They're just repeating YOUR words without the background to understand what they're saying. Like training a dog to "speak".
Audience participation happens IF it happens.
Trying to "force" it negates any positives from it.
Your audience is technical, and most technical people I know are very interested in the problems you've had to solve.
What were your biggest problems? Why were they important to solve? What difficulties did you have troubleshooting? What approaches did you consider? Why did you reject some solutions? What decisions or assumptions did you make that turned out to be incorrect? How did you finally solve your problems? Were there any "a-ha" moments, or novel approaches to a solution? What are the biggest issues you face in the near future, and what are your plans to improve what you have?
Give me stories from the trenches that explain why your systems look the way they do today, and I'm hooked!
Excellent advice on how to structure and present complex information.
The most important part is deciding what you want to accomplish
Have member of the audience act as the various devices and use a few soft foam balls to simulate traffic / whatever. Keep the stuff short, easy to grasp and fun. This way even the non-participants in the audience will remember the concepts you were trying to convey. But no stupid, "I am John from the QA team" introductions for audience members.
Wow, so many useful suggestions.
Here are a few other ones.
First, train yourself !
Speaking publicly is not easy, you need to learn the basics.
1) Since most of the communication is not verbal, you need to master your appearance and your gestures. Face your public, open your arms, smile.
2) Look your audience from left to right then right to left.
3) Master your voice. We tend to have a pitched voice. Try to breathe deeply.
About the content: ...)
1) Try to search what your audience wants to learn or hear
2) Prepare thoroughly your presentation (1 hour of presentation needs at least 10 hours of preparation). Your content should not be in your powerpoint.
3) Interact with your audience (survey, questions,
4) People like to hear stories, so tell your story as if you lived it yesterday, and what lessons were to be learnt
5) Surprise your audience (people get bored after 10 minutes)
What is important is not what you'll tell, but what you want to convey.
Wow them with a talk about how the Internet is made up of a bunch of tubes...
I lost my sig...
Make it look like a Michael Bay film. Explosions, asteroids, big tittied women, and transformers... Can't go wrong.
Developers: how can they optimize network usage in the product(s)? what beneficial effect does that have on your clients?
QA: How do you look for appropriate traffic? assure your product wont adversely affect a clients network?
PM: How should you work with your clients on network issues? what signs should you look for to see the product is helping or hurting client infrastructure?
keep it INFORMAL! trust me, it'll go over big if you do! No power points, no written agenda, just open casual discussion and live demonstation, etc. Works well on my side of IT -- network engineering. David.
First, I rattle off several phrases like "Cloud, synergy, take ownership, metrics, TCO, 5-Nines, and IPV6". Then announce "Now that we have a winner for buzzword bingo I'll move on to an overview of our systems, and key pieces you should know of.
Don't be detailed on anything. You being a techie probably love details. The hot secretary, not so much. Stay with high level views. Primary tools and what the hot secretary may use them for. Engineering probably already knows the details, or can figure it out.
Don't talk to fast, and try to maintain the same tone of voice. You are showing what you have, not preaching or telling people "If it don't change we are all gonna die!". You are probably more excited about parts you built, but remember that nobody else cares.
Span some generation. What we plan to phase out, what we plan to phase in. Old toys, new toys analogies can work.
If you think you need Q&A time, save 5 minutes for Q&A nothing more. Tell people at the start you will have 5 minutes for Q&A. You don't want to give personal training sessions during your presentation. Remember you can reserve "Come see me after the meeting and I'll try to answer that for you." as a defacto answer.
Last part, which many don't think about. PRACTICE! Run it through 1 time yourself with a timer. Make sure you have 25 minutes covered. Last, get a friend, spouse, relative.. and run through the presentation. Get their input and change things accordingly.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I agree with almost everything Mark Jason Dominus says in this http://perl.plover.com/yak/presentation/
One of the most useful things I learned in college was that there is only one type of speech: A speech to sell something.
Once you've figured out what it is you're selling, the rest is easy.
3 things that I believe make my presentations successful. 1) Don't tell them WHAT you did (or do), tell them WHY you did (or do) it. 2) Tell it to them as a coherent story, not as a set of bullet points 3) Remember this quotation from Maya Angelou: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” If you can do those 3 things, you will be fabulous....
I was at a computer talk this week where a the speaker called on people in the audience to read captions on the slides. A caption balloon would pop up emphasizing an important point abut a figure. You had to stay alert in case you were called.
Since apparently we have no respect for the audience, spraying them with almost freezing water will also prevent them from falling asleep.
The part about IT is not the problem. The issue is that you need to learn to make presentations. Take up public speaking. There are several ways to acquire this kind of skill. I suggest Toastmasters as an inexpensive route. Not instantaneous, but in a year or two you can do well.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Change your network diagrams from paper to people and string.
try limiting your slides to just images without any displayed text. in my experience it forces you to think about storytelling and the audience to learn in a much different way. if you can draw or are into photography then all the better.
I mean, it is "Booth Babes" and not "Boothbabes" right?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
If you subtly remind them of all the ways you're inspecting their packets, they're less likely to nod off. MUAHAHA
First be a good public speaker. You're much more likely too keep someone's attention for the duration of your presentation if people aren't annoyed listening to you.
And here's someing I've wanted to try but haven't had the opportunity to yet. If your using a Mac to show a slide deck, configure custom voice commands for "computer, next slide" and "computer, previous slide." If it works, everyone you're presenting to will most likely be distracted by that and forget the rest of your presentation, but they'll remember something. ;-)
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Just think of a couple of good stories, maybe a network failure or a major round of upgrades, something the audience can relate to and say "oh yeah I remember that, oh so that's how you solved it..." Seriously the only things I remember from my college lectures are the professors' anecdotes, the only things from college that helped me in my career are the professors' anecdotes.
If your audience starts to look bored, take off your shoes and start nibbling on your feet...
1. Present who the top web users are in the company
2. Who downloads the most and what they download
3. Who uses the most email
4. Who forgets to leave the computer on at night
Refer to the one that Sheri's wearing....
You didn't say how long you have to prepare, but, if possible, obtain a copy of Joey Asher's "15 Minutes Including Q&A: A Plan to Save the World From Lousy Presentations". Kindle edition is $2.99 at Amazon. Read it and follow the instructions. You should do just fine. (Also, assuming your state has a lottery, consider buying a few $1 tickets and parcel them out during your presentation. On word of caution: Be prepared to feign happiness for anyone in your audience who strikes it rich.)
If your not sure on the what you're trying to achieve by this presentation you're already lost.
There are 100 people who are worth $100/hour so the presentation has a cost of $5000 for 30 minutes.
Once you're got something that you want to communicate the next step is how. For this I would use the Lessig method rather than death by powerpoint. Google "Lessig Method". If you can present your message in 5 minutes do it. Don't try to bore people for 30 minutes because you think to have to.
There is an amazing book called "Advanced Presentations by Design", it gives an actual approach to making presentations and debunk many myths. I strongly recommend reading it; it is available on Amazon or from the author's website: http://www.extremepresentation.com/
lucm, indeed.
Showing beats telling every time.
Rob Enderle's excellent new book: Everything I needed to know about Computer Science I learned in Marketing School
maybe a taser? You'd keep their attention on you the whole time I'd bet. LOL
Hello,
I always find it interesting when our IT person describes to me in great detail all the not-save-for-work pages people have been viewing at work. You could make this really, really interesting (hot seat style) by building up a lot of tension like you are about to 'out' someone for inappropriate Internet use, in front of everyone. If you wanted it to be all in good fun, you could use real inappropriate pages that people are looking at, and real data with number of times they have accessed those pages, but not actually name any names.
Anyways, I hope you like this idea.
-Brian J. Stinar-
That long will put many to sleep. Tell them what's important to them and then let somebody else have it.
Table-ized A.I.
Don't use powerpoint. Even the military has acknowledged that powerpoint makes you stupid (just google it).
If you can't speak without anything more than a list of the main points you want to cover, and maybe a marker board to draw diagrams on, then please ST*U and get someone else to do the presentation.
And try to keep it under 10 minutes - you can use the other 20 for Q and A.
The 3 rules:
1. Tell them what you're going to tell them (30 seconds to 1 minute, the "Intro")
2. Tell them what you're there to tell them (8 minutes - the "meat and potatoes")
3. Tell them what you just told them (1 minute - "the summary")
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
This TED talk was posted just yesterday, and addresses your question perfectly.
This is either satire, or you are everything that's wrong with working with other people.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It's an electronic rehash of overhead projector slides that was outdated as soon as a hypertext linked document could be displayed were a lot of people could see it, or as soon as it became cheap to do video presentations. If your presentation is good enough to be seen more than once it's final resting place is on the web anyway, so why not write it with the web in mind in the first place?
Short and simple with links to more detail for the final version and the detail given verbally in the presented version is the way I've done it. In that case it's treating it as a blackboard/whiteboard to fill in the bits that are easier to present graphically than verbally.
http://www.mobilepriceinfo.com
mobile price info is the best mobile price website providing mobile prices, mobile reviews, mobile models, mobile features, and lots more so check it out
In my opinion, don't even try to 'brighten up' boring information. I so hate that, and i'm sure many others.
If the information is dull, best you can do is to organize it as good as you can, hand them out on paper if you want, so people can review them for their own, and keep your verbal notes on it as brief as possible.
Look. The main reason you'r giving that talk is to give that information. Not to try to be funny. If your audience wanted to be entertained, they'd hired a stand-up comedian. They didn't, they asked you. To give that information.
So, you just do exactly that. Give the information. As brief as possible. Don't go into dull but supposedly funny anecdotes, as they will not have the effect you expect. Also, don't expect that all of the sudden you are as funny as this-brilliant-TED-speaker, as you won't.
The best way of entertaining is if you can keep your talk in less than the 30 minutes that are given you (and for sure not a minute longer), and by being as informative as you can in that time, so that your audience doesn't feel their time is wasted. Just. be. informative. No more, no less. And yes, this post is the exact opposite of a good example as i'm repeating the same over and over again.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
I do some speaking, both professionally and for fun. I have run teaching workshops, from a couple of hours through to two-days long. I love speaking to an audience about a subject I care about.
This is a workshop I gave last year on managing information security. This is a video of a talk I gave recently on the evolution of the personal computer.
Here are some tips that I think help to make a better experience for everybody.
Understand your audience
Who are you presenting to? What are they likely to find most interesting? Most valuable? What single clear mesasge would you most like to communicate to them?
When preparig for a business talk, look up "Zachman Enterprise Architecture." The Zachman Framework describes the different views that different roles have in an organisation. Show how your view relates to their view, and how you support their objectives.
Know your subject; Prepare and Practice
You influence how your audience reacts, and how your audience reacts will influence how you feel. This sets up a feedback loop. If you know what you're talking about, and are passionate about it, this comes across to your audience very positively. If you are unsure or uncomfortable this also comes across.
There's no substitute for knowing exactly what you want to say. This doesn't come from preparing a script and reading from it; it comes from being absolutely clear in your own mind what points you want to make. For me, I find it works to write down the whole speech in advance, and to read through it a few times before giving the talk. When actually presenting, I don't read from my speaking notes, but I do have them in front of me to refer to if I can't remember a detail, or where I was planning to take it next.
Go through your talk by yourself, and if you can it is invaluable to practice it in front of someone else - they'll often pick up on confusing or badly explained ideas and help you communicate them better.
Sometimes things will go wrong - if you know your subject and you know what you were planning to say, you can move on smoothly without letting problems impact the experience too badly.
Visual slides, not text heavy slides
This can't be stressed enough; nobody wants to see somebody reading their own slides. It's boring, and it wastes their time and yours. You might as well have sent out a document and been done with it - you'd probably all be better off.
Because you know your subject, you shouldn't need too many queues to know what you want to say. Use the slides to reinforce what you are saying; graphs, diagrams (clear, simple diagrams!), photographs or short video clips make good slides. Words don't. If you have to use words, and sometimes you do, keep it short and simple. Guy Kawasaki proposes the 10/20/30 rule; Ten slides, Twenty minutes, Thirty point font.
Interact with your audience
If you are comfortable interactibg with the audience, doing so regularly helps keep them engaged. If you're not comfortable, try planning a few questions for the audience at relevent points in your talk.
Relax
It may not be easy, but try to relax. Some people find it ewasy to get aup and talk to an audience, and some people don't. If you don't, you'll find it gets easier the more you do it. I still get nervous before a talk - every single time without fail - but I'm fine once I start as long as I've prepared and know the points I want to make.
How to Make IT Presentations Shorter and More Enjoyable
-- Prior to the Meeting Place a Quarter Pound of C4 Under Each Participant's Chair
-- Wire Some Detonators to Trigger at Random Intervals
-- Connect the Remainder to Wireless "Voting" Controllers
-- At Periodic Intervals, Pause the Presentation for a Quick Survey
You know, as long as The Elders of The Internet will approve.
I always go thru it before making a presentation: ...
http://www.slideshare.net/thecroaker/death-by-powerpoint
also, for good practice, play powerpoint karaoke
Get your company to install the Mezzanine system from Oblong Industries. Your audience will be able to interact with your presentation, share laptop video streams, applications and ...just a lot of cool things. These guys were all the rage at the Mobile World Congress this year.
http://oblong.com/offerings/products
I found this book ("Presentation Zen") on the subject to be very useful. I give presentations several times a week.
http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Zen-Simple-Delivery-Edition/dp/0321811984/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331967555&sr=8-1
Personal nudity always gets attention and wakes up sleepy audiences, as do firearms. The downside is, after they've all run screaming from the room there's no one left to listen except the guy who had fallen asleep. You can handle that by standing in front of him and shaking him gently.
When presenting software, many fail to contextualise the relevance of the developments they present.
Always be clear to state the user story and try to make it as cool as you thought it was when you were thinking it up.
I coach guys that work for me in presentation and I tell them always to include "what we're doing", "why we're doing it" and "who we're doing it for".
After the fourth or fifth meeting I started pondering a network printer virus that would spread from printer to printer and quietly replace the word "Stategic" with the word "Satanic" on any printed materials. That would liven up those meetings for a while. Too bad I could never figure out how to open a network socket with PostScript. Subverting the firmware at a lower level would be such a bother...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I've studied presentation principles for a while now and I advise presenters on the side.
You need to come up with the goal for your time. What do you want your audience to leave with? "Beyond Bullet Points" covers this in a very straight forward manner.
Although your question decries bandwidth graphs and network maps, the truth is that simple graphs and picture that represent ideas are much more effective than a dozen bullet points. People will connect to a picture that is used like an icon. So if you want to talk about the "server", you could put up a picture of a waiter and every time you talk about the server have that picture on the screen. For client machines you could have a guy with a plate of food in front of him. In other words you don't need a picture of a computer to represent the computers on your system. You want an image that represents an idea that you reinforce throughout the presentation. Graphs can be very effective if they have a single purpose. Graphs should not be used to show a bunch of details. The audience won't know where to look. Boil down the graph to whatever you want to demonstrate and only show those data points. You as the speaker can fill in the details. That way the audience is listening to you not trying to read all the tiny text on the baseline of the graph.
The most memorable powerpoint presentation I have ever seen is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrpajcAgR1E . After watching it 1 time I could tell you all of the presenter's main points and his reasoning for them. This is extremely unusual. Typically a user can only remember 1 point, but his use of pictures allow your mind to remember ideas without having to remember a bunch of words.
In WW2 the Army learned to spice up 'educational' videos for soldiers with shots of a machine gun firing every few minutes. It woke them up and got their attention, then as they started to drift away, bam! another clip of a machine gun.
subliminal shots of a frosty mug of beer, just for a quarter second or so work wonders too.
EZ. Don't stand. Don't talk. Don't point. In fact, don't show up.
I work at a company where every presentation has to have a PowerPoint deck and it's almost heretical to do a presentation without one. Nothing's worse than having someone drone on, reading their PowerPoint slides that have so much text that they're impossible to read.
The point of focus the presentation should be you and what you have to say and not what you put on a set of slides.
One of the best presentations I ever saw was by Peter Senge (MIT Prof, author of The 5th Discipline). He had no slides at all. Only at one point did he turn on an overhead projector and draw on it. He was incredibly engaging and I could have easily watched him present or another hour. The interesting thing was that while he was drawing on the projector, everyone was very drawn in to see what what going to come out... it was very dynamic.
I'm no authority on presentations, but here's what I like to do:
* start with some kind of joke or bit of levity to lighten things up and make people (and yourself) more comfortable. It's hard to go wrong with a relevant XKCD or Dilbert comic (if you have slides)
* keep the slides to a minimum and make them graphical so you can talk about them but not read them
* plan to actually use about 75% of your alloted time. This gives you a chance to entertain questions and builds a buffer for going into details if needed. Nobody will complain if you finish early.
* have a "what's the one thing I want them to remember" and close with that
* try to stay on topic and don't let questions derail your presentation. We sometimes have a "parking lot" written on a side board for writing down issues to be raised later so they don't break down the current meeting.
In contrast to Senge's presentation, I was stuck in one at an Army Birthday Ball that started optimistically enough but ended badly. The keynote speaker started with "Be bright, be brief, be gone." and then proceeded to miss all three while killing the mood of the evening with a 2 hour briefing on how bad things were.
In any case, try to have fun. If you're having fun, there's a better chance that the others will enjoy your presentation.
Lastly, if you have control over the order of presenters, try not to follow someone who is much better at presentations than you are.
Just bring along a copy of the internet... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
30 Minutes is way too long, if it can't be expressed in an entertaining way in 15 minutes, making it last the double will only be twice as bad...
Send everyone an email about how they can access their workstation from home by logging in to companyname.remotedesktopservice.com. Set up a landing website using http://www.sptoolkit.com/. This is a cheap and efficiant way to educate people about the issue.
Set a plate of poo on a stool..darken the room and have a single overhead light pointing down directly above the plate.
Than come out dress as a mime and pretend to be polishing the turd. By this artistic display you are representing how you manage to keep the network running, using old gear, no budget, no staff and under paid.
Code Monkey Throw Poo
Time is too short for Toastmasters to help you on this presentation, but it will definitely help you to wow! them with your next.
Seriously, IT workers typically are poor public speakers. It is a skill that can be learned and should be learned if you want to be promoted. I, like most IT techie guys, am an extreme introvert, so good speaking didn't come naturally. I joined Toastmasters and found that I enjoyed speaking to groups, became good at it and it was heavily promoted on my promotion package -- which was displayed for all to see as my boss (who I had talked into joining) gave a speech where I learned that I was promoted.
It gave me the confidence to apply as speaker at conferences and traveling the country giving presentations to my peers was awesome.
Toastmasters give you the opportunity to learn to speak in a non-threatening enviornment. Try it - you may find that the like it. You and the people that have to listen to you will enjoy your new-found expertise.
DC Stultz
Distinguished Toastmaster
45 year career in the computer field
Clearwater FL
Seriously, that is what I thought. While the message that it was all about developers for Microsoft did come across, I strongly felt that I'd rather not be a developer using problems - sorry, products - made by a company that is run by an agressive lunatic.
I didn't write 'problems' to do any MS bashing, I actually meant to type 'products' but apparently having the Developers dance in mind had this effect on me.
DON'T, DON'T, DON'T read every fricken bullet!! Paraphrase each slide, don't read it. Everyone can read, you need to provide comments outside of what's on the screen.
Start out with a laptop and projector, load power point up... wait for everyone to sigh... then toss the laptop in the trash and tap the keg you have hidden behind a desk.
At that time, dancing girls come strolling in and while performing they go over whatever the hell it is you need to explain to these people that probably already know what you are going to say before you say it.
Yup, that would keep me interested.
What some of the comments about Ballmer fail to note is that he kept his audience engaged. Modern video media creates the audience expectation that something dynamic will take place every 15 to 20 seconds, for that is the longest one camera angle will characteristically be held. Change slides, wave your arms, walk into the audience, but move. That's what will keep you and your presentation in the audience's attention.
Funny everyone here who mentions Jobs has to use their "little disclaimer" (like your say what you will): Why's that? Is it since he was nothing more than a bullshit artist that used others and had the audacity to accept credit for THEIR work as his, somehow?? This fools nobody. Typical crap that bullshit artists use, nothing more.
Depending on what you're going for, make people get up and become part of your presentation. I used to be the sole IT person for a company with a small army of minimum wage employees, and in order to get them to understand computer security, and the need for it, I turned our yearly meetings into one of those who-dunnit dinner parties (with pizza cut into tiny squares like orderves and soda). I used Clue (the board game) as a model and just wrote parts for people and they got handed out randomly at the beginning. I was told every year by the new employees that it was the most fun anyone had ever had during an office meeting. Throughout the "meeting" I basically gave mini presentations to people that they had to read as their parts of the show. I would then answer any questions on them or elaborate on the concepts if people seemed extra engaged. There was an immedaite reduction in the volume of sketchy website traffic blocked by my filters after that, and a vastly improved overall awareness of computer security. It was also a great way to run a meet and greet for all of the people involved. I understand that you have 30 minutes, perhaps you could push for some more time, ours typically ran 2 hours but we had over 150 people, and at the beginning when we were smaller they were closer to an hour.
Dmitri: You don't need to give a stand up act to not be boring. Instead, remember that you're giving a presentation not delivering a written presentation. The value of a presentation is that you can adjust what you say to meet the needs of your audience and you can answer any questions that they have (a written report can't do either of these). One final note: you're the star of the show. If you use PowerPoint slides (and we all do), their job is support the words that you say -- not take over the stage. Limit the number of slides that you use and minimize the number of words that each slide has... For more info, check out www.TheAccidentalCommunicator.com for non-boring presentation tips...
Put in an "anonymous" graph of porn usage by hour in the company. LOL that will give ppl something to talk about
First, get a bag of chocolate mini's and ask questions. Start off offering chocolate for answers...if people clam up start throwing chocolate at random people and demanding guesses.
Second, splice in a few single-frames of pornography along the way and see if anyone notices. (Fight Club!)
and hot babes always works really well.
Get a copy of Patrick Allitt's series The Art of Teaching, which has a lot of information about doing presentations in front of people. His stuff is geared towards teaching, but there is a lot of it useful to everyone who does presentations.
Also, take advice from Tony Robbins, whether you like him or not, to find people who do presentations well and model what they do that you like.
Use a whiteboard if you must use visual aids. Slideware is the death of conversation. The advantage of a whiteboard is that you can ask people to draw what they think the network looks like. That would, in fact, be a great way to kick off the discussion--because that's what you're having.
This was probably the best presentation i have seen, and yes, i did suck at power point before it.
http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/you-suck-at-powerpoint
I knew I was on the right path when a former boss actually called me into his office and wanted to know if I was spending too much time making my presentations look nice. Since his idea of a good presentation was bullet points which were later read to the audience, i took it as a compliment.
I invite you to install Tao Presentations. Start with the free Discovery editions, http://www.taodyne.com/shop/fr/licences/20-tao-presentations-discovery.html. Once this is done, use the link tao://git.taodyne.com/examples/TEDx and load TEDx.ddd.
This is best viewed with a stereoscopic screen, but it works well on a regular 2D screen as well. This may give you ideas on how to tell your story.
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
I've always found the most impressive presentations don't have any slides. Know the information cold (or maybe just a sheet of notes) and present orally and by writing on the write board. If you need to show charts or diagrams that are not practical to draw live, a few simple slides shouldn't detract from the over all effect. The overall impression is that you know and understand the information so well that you don't need to fallback on slides, you're able to present it naturally, almost in a conversational manner (even if it's not a two way conversation).
Slashdot is not a game, Slashdot is not a game. Crap, I just lost points.
Google Cinema 4D and Greyscale Gorilla
and if that doesn't work, use flaming arrows and shoot whoever starts texting underneath the table first. They will listen.
Any ideas for holding everyone's interest?
pr0n. Gets 'em every time.
Solar Arrow Board
Identify the spikes in traffic and point out it was them streaming March Madness. of some other social / company event.
I remembering our network guys showing the spikes during the day and how they align with people reading the news in the morning, surfing at lunch and checking entertainment schedules around 4:30.
Or show that facebook accounts for 20% of all traffic.
Pick a copy of Presentationzen by Garr and study about it. Also read some presentations about technical topic on TED to learn how people present them