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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Applied to the average IT guy, the audience will WISH their eyes glazed over...
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
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.
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!
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.
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!
With blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the meeting!
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.
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.
'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
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
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.
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....
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.
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.
If your audience starts to look bored, take off your shoes and start nibbling on your feet...
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
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.
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.
THIS. Use The Daily WTF for tons of fodder.
Sand's overrated... it's just tiny little rocks.
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.
Um. I'd have to say that if your presentation is boring enough that you have to resort to tricks like this, you've got more important things to worry about than the colour of your laser pointer. The best powerpoint I've EVER seen was a slideshow of six pictures, only one of which was a chart. The presenter split his talk up into four sections and addressed the four major aspects of his talk off the top of his head. The powerpoint only acted as a visual prompt for each section. The first and last slide were for the intro and the summary.
I always go thru it before making a presentation: ...
http://www.slideshare.net/thecroaker/death-by-powerpoint
also, for good practice, play powerpoint karaoke
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 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.
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.
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.
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...
and hot babes always works really well.
My god, this is lame.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
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.
Any ideas for holding everyone's interest?
pr0n. Gets 'em every time.
Sure, it makes the presentation more interesting, but the consequence is that the attendees end up learning nothing from your presentation material. Sort of defeats the purpose of the presentation.
Solar Arrow Board
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