Presentations
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Presentations
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Notes on effective presentations.
Leader's Digest
- by Leslie Dillon
Do you want to make more effective presentations?
If you're looking for ways to improve your presentations and make panel discussions you participate in more effective, here are a couple of items I ran across that you might be interested in.
Changing the traditional triad
John Windsor, an online columnist for Sales & Marketing Management, urges us to be wary of the standard advice about presentations--tell them what you're going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you've told them.
While this approach "is not without value," the potential for poor results is "huge": you risk not engaging your audience, not involving them and talking down to them.
What to do instead:
- Address their interests at the start. "Make it clear from your first slide...that this is about their needs, interests and goals."
- Paint a picture of how things can be. Give them as rich an image as you can early on.
- Give them a compelling reason to respond. "Every presentation should have a specific objective..."
(John Windsor, "Presenting smart: What's the worst presentation advice?" Sales & Marketing Management's Manage Smarter, April 1, 2008.)
- Editor's note: "From your first slide"? Speaking of tired now-traditional presentation habits, must every presentation use "slides" (more probably PowerPoint pages)?
Pecha Kucha
Pecha Kucha (pronounced peh-chak-cha), Japanese for the sound of conversation, is a patented system for a series of fast-paced presentations. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each--giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise and the interest level up.
It was used in a panel discussion at the recent Computers in Libraries conference, and an ARL library is sponsoring a Pecha Kucha series to feature the work of outstanding students.
(Eric Schnell, The medium is the message, Apr. 9, 2008.)
Related articles and resources
Quite a few librarians and library people have offered comments on presentation styles, and related issues of conferences and conference speaking, on blogs and elsewhere. Some of those comments appear within the second bullet below.
- Marketing notes
- Perspective: Conference speaking: I have a little list - Walt Crawford gathers and adds his own comments on conference presentations and the surrounding arrangements. These notes also appear in a much broader context in Cites on a Plane 2, the Mid-June 2007 issue of Cites & Insights
