Tips to Improve Your Presentations

Updated 4/18 with a really good point I overlooked - it's in the Your Content section below. 

It's conference season, and it looks like many events are returning to in-person get togethers. AIIM22 is April 27-29, followed two weeks later by MER 2022. Having sat through easily a hundred presentations in the last two years, and being a speaker myself with more than 400 presentations under my belt, I thought I'd offer some tips for a better presentation. 

These tips are not so much related to content as to how it's delivered. So the usual platitudes about knowing your audience and tailoring your message, engage your audience, etc. all apply but I won't belabor them here. Rather, I'll focus more on the mechanics and how not to lose your audience. Note that most of these apply whether a presentation is in-person or virtual. 

Be prepared. Again, I'm not talking about your content per se. Rather, I'm talking about the 24 or so hours leading up to your presentation. 

• Know where you're supposed to be and at what time. That includes time to get set up, microphone attached, etc. 
• Don't....um.... "impair" yourself the night before. An 8:00 am session sucks when you're hung over and dehydrated, and your audience will know. 
• Drink plenty of water the day before, the day of, and have some with you if allowed. 
• Practice, and time, your content. If you do this, you may be able to address some of my content points below proactively.

Technology. Have your tech squared away before you get there. In many bigger events, the tech will be provided for you and you just need to have sent your materials in on time. Also - meet your deadlines. If you use a Mac, have an HDMI converter. If you have an older, HDMI-challenged laptop, have an HDMI converter. Bring your own remote and extra batteries. Bring a printed copy of your materials in case things seriously go sideways. 

Your intro. I like to provide a long, glorious, verbose bio for the website and any advertising. The day of, the shorter the better - no more than name, rank & serial number, err, title and company. The attendees are there for your content, not your life story. If you've got the podium, you're going to get the benefit of the doubt for at least a few minutes, and once you establish rapport, your materials and your facilitation of the discussion should be the focus. 

Ditch the bio slide. Again, it isn't about you. 

Ditch the logo slides. Looking at you in particular, vendors and consultants. We know you've done work for 99.4% of the Fortune 100. So has everyone else. Similarly, ditch your solution/methodology slide. It's off-putting outside of a specific context and expectation. Put a link to a landing page in your Thank You or contact info slide, or add the solution/methodology slide at the very end AND DON'T CLICK IT. It's there if people want to see it. 

Provide some sort of an agenda. Doesn't have to be fancy, but help people understand where they are and where they are going. 

Your content. Get rid of half your slides. Seriously. Almost everyone puts way too many slides together, which generally leads to one of three outcomes: 

1. You realize you're running out of time, so you skip some/many/most slides. And those tend to be at the end, and are often the entire point of your presentation. 
2. You realize you're running out of time, so you start whipping through the slides just to get through them. 
3. You DON'T realize you're running out of time, so you go over. WAY over. 

Bonus: in all three cases, you also don't provide any opportunity for people to ask questions. 

Which slides can you get rid of? Almost certainly your first few where you're level-setting. Want a pithy quote? Fine. But everyone at your presentation knows, e.g., from my world, "The amount of information continues to explode." "More information has been created in the last 10 minutes than in the first 100,000 years of human communications." "Up to 80% of information is unstructured." "A record is defined as (insert some overly technical explanation here)". Unless your audience is brand new, and I mean months of experience at most, they know all of that. They are there to talk about whatever the topic is. 

Take out insanely detailed tables, charts, or images that use 2-point font. Nobody can read them anyway, and you already knew that because you probably said something like "I don't know if you can read this, but..." 

As my colleague Karen Stanley reminded me, "Avoid reading your slides out loud, particularly if they're all text. There's nothing more boring. Put the details in a handout - they'll be more appreciated and useful - and focus on the most critical "so whats" in the actual talk." I don't know how I overlooked that one, but it's horrible to be in a presentation with a slide-reader. We read so much faster than we hear, that we're done reading before you're done talking - and now we're bored. 

In fact, if you're a "wall of text" PPTer, I suggest you change your approach. Use more images - I like photos, relevant ones, and I like a photo with maybe a title or a line of text. Your other 6 bullets are your talking points. By making this simple change, you can kind of keep reading from slides, except you're not. If you can't remember them all, you probably haven't practiced enough, but print them as notes. Make flash cards. Put them on your phone. 

If you mention additional resources - standards, books, etc. - consider adding one or more slides that list them with links. Don't read those slides to attendees, but let them see them and write them down or take pictures as appropriate. If you have a relevant book, white paper, etc. I think it's OK to list it, but not sell it from the podium or push people to your website to get it. If they want it, they'll figure out how to go get it. 

Your closer. Unless it's a keynote where you're not taking or expecting questions, leave some time for them. I generally prefer not to take questions during because there is a good chance I'll answer them later in the session, but if you do take them during, build time in for that, and still keep a couple minutes at the end as well. 

What tips would you give speakers to improve the sessions you're going to attend? 

Additional resources:

This video by Sanjeev NC called "Every Conference Presentation Ever" illustrates many of these points succinctly. Also, it's a long comment thread, but there are some amazing comments in there, including this one: 

Hilarious (because they're spot on)!!!

More gems:

• Let's go around the room and introduce ourselves.
• A big round of applause for...
• Hmm, the demo doesn't seem to be working...
• That's a great question:
• Can we take it offline?
• I'll answer it after the break.
• Would anyone like to take a shot at answering it?
• Please make sure you fill the feedback forms before you leave.

Similarly, Don McMillan offers his take on Life After Death by PowerPoint: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjcO2ExtHso&t=153s

Here are some other great tips that will make you a better presenter: 

Top Eight Rules for Creating a PowerPoint Presentation, courtesy of the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology: https://www.pharmacoepi.org/pub/?id=76a123f3-c419-8689-f823-a38e28f5fd02

Guy Kawasaki's 10-20-30 rule of PowerPoint: https://guykawasaki.com/the_102030_rule/

SlideGenius looks at the 10-20-30 rule 15 years later: https://www.slidegenius.com/blog/guy-kawasakis-10-20-30-rule-presentation