Presentations

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Presentations

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Library leaders do presentations--that's almost always true. Sometimes that means laying out a proposal at work; sometimes it means speaking in front of a few (or a few hundred) strangers.

This article discusses "traditional" presentations--speeches given at a podium, with or without PowerPoint slides or equivalent visual aids. Presentation alternatives discusses alternative approaches.

Note: "Too much presentation pressure" moved to Presentation pressure because it's now coupled with a careful response, and the combination made this article too long.

A snarky two-minute introduction to typical presentations

The recent "standard" for presentations is the PowerPoint shuffle:

  • Prepare your ideas and turn them into bullet points as much as possible.
  • If the presentation lasts more than 10 minutes or so, you'll probably use the "what I tell you three times is true" model: You'll tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them in more detail, then tell them what you just told them. Your written form needs to reflect that.
  • Turn the bullet points into a PowerPoint (or Keynote or equivalent) presentation, adding clip art, transitions, etc., etc., to spice things up.
  • Read your presentation as the audience sees exactly the same points up on the screen. With the lights down, you won't see people falling asleep but you might hear them typing away as they find something--anything--to maintain their interest.
  • Finish to perfunctory applause so the next speaker can switch out notebooks (poor) or insert their flash drive with the PPT on it (better)

Yes, that's snarky--and yes, it's unfair to a great many people who use PowerPoint creatively. But it's also, let's face it, probably true of the majority of all conference presentations (and, I'd guess, extended at-work presentations) you've seen in recent years.

Action-reflection action-reflection

By Steven Bell. Adapted and excerpted from this April 29, 2009 post at ACRLog. Used by permission.

The ACRL final keynote speech was my first opportunity to hear from Ira Glass, the host of the public radio program This American Life. Glass used his presentation to give us a feel for how he puts together both his radio show and the stories he features there. There were many fans in the audience, and it was a really great talk--and great way to bring the conference to a close.

The one aspect of the talk--I wouldn’t exactly call it a presentation--that most resonated with me was Glass’s discussion of telling stories. I’ve heard a number of good storytellers, and it’s fascinating when someone does it well. There’s not much storytelling at library conferences. I’d look forward to more of it because I imagine the presenters have interesting stories to share. Perhaps the reason it happens so rarely is evidenced in the comment of an audience member. She said that even though she can write just about any type document she couldn’t tell a story to save her life. Few librarians have opportunities to tell stories, and if you feel little confidence in your ability to tell a story it will fail. Glass used the book One Thousand and One Nights to provide an example of two things: how to tell a story and what a great story should accomplish.

Glass’ advice was to stick to a simple formula:

  • Give an action.
  • Then give a reflection.
  • An action.
  • Then a reflection...

In other words, tell some story and then interject some meaning. But the action has to get the audience’s attention and keep them wondering what’s going to happen next. That’s the hook according to Glass...

Other tips from Glass include using suspense to keep the listener wondering what happens next; aim for a point that relates to a universal human experience; avoid starting with a “here’s what I’m going to do” message because it eliminates the ability to build suspense.

Probably the best instructor I ever had was a master at telling a story or sharing an anecdote from his many years of experience in higher education, but he’d quickly relate it to a theoretical point he wanted us to learn. Then he’d move from theory to another story. Waiting for the next story made it easy to get through those late night classes.

Few [academic librarians] are naturally gifted story tellers. Becoming a better story teller, just like presenting well at any level, requires authentic practice... Don’t worry so much about whether there are 10 or 11 words on a slide or if it has the right colors or images (well, if you’re going to use images they better fit what you are saying). Better yet, use images that help tell the story. We talk about how librarians can be better presenters. Perhaps focusing more on the story, and letting your images provide the backdrop is one way to do that.

Of course, it’s all going to depend on having good stories. Sometimes storytellers will depend on old folks tales. Sometimes it’s just something that happened to you. Good stories are all around us, but you have to keep your eyes and ears open for them. Perhaps something interesting happened at your reference desk or during an instruction session. For a presentation I’m preparing on the topic of entrepreneurship I found a nice little story to illustrate the importance of exploring new ideas that fall outside the boundaries of your official job duties. I came across it in a magazine that has nothing to do with librarianship. It can help to get outside our literature in search of potential stories. The catch is to find stories that lead into reflections that relate to the presentation topic--and that drive home the points without the bullet points.

Glass finished by reminding us that the Internet is full of stories--thousands of them. We are inundated with them. Some really inspire us. Others have a falseness to them. He said we know when we hear an authentic story because we can really empathize with it and it’s much more profound. A good story helps you sort out what’s real and what isn’t, and it makes you feel a bit saner. That’s why Glass likes to create stories for the radio--because it’s all about sharing a voice.

Presentation = Speech + Slides

This article (posts on In the library with the lead pipe are signed peer-reviewed articles), by Derik Badman, appeared December 17, 2008. Linking to Aaron Schmidt's "HOWTO give a good presentation" (see later in this article), Badman posits and discusses a range of "slide-speech interaction" models for traditional presentations. Very brief excerpts from the 2,200-word article (only the bold items and quoted sentences are direct quotations):

  1. Slides and speech are redundant: The classic boring "reading from the PowerPoint" presentation and the inspiration for Hiding behind PowerPoint. Badman notes that the redundancy is disengaging, the audience will be ahead of the speaker (even more so if there are handouts with all the slides)--and in many cases "the speaker becomes peripheral and even unnecessary."
  2. Slides and speech are independent: Pretty rare but potentially interesting--the visuals tell a story that's not directly parallel to the speech. "A library conference is probably not the place to be experimenting with such things...unless you have something really well done and interesting planned."
  3. Speech carries presentation: "At some point people stopped just talking and started using slides and other media." Not entirely true--yours truly still mostly talks without slides--but these days a "cursory use of slides that tend to be brief, visually dull, and do little to add anything to the speech" tends to be more common for speakers shying away from redundancy. "The slides act as little more than placeholders, a visual signifier to back-up the speech and add a small portion of emphasis. This type of presentation is not necessarily bad, but it does require a speaker who is dynamic and engaging." And with such a speaker, one might wonder whether slides are needed at all.
  4. Slides carry presentation: Rarely seen at conferences--like "classic vacation slideshow." "This may be the appropriate style for certain types of presentations, but one would need a good sense of design and visual narrative to pull off something like this successfully. Information that is process or space oriented might be the best candidates for visually driven slides that require little added speech."
  5. Slides and speech share duties in conveying a point: "I believe this is the ideal mode for most speech + slides presentations. When visually appealing slides complement the speech, the presenter can engage multiple senses of the audience members."

There's lots more in the article. For example:

  • "If you want to have a take away for the audience, printing out your slides is a cop-out." Badman suggests speaking notes or a halfsheet of main points and links--and in any case, an absolutely fundamental aspect of "greening" conferences is getting rid of all those slide handouts.

Badman's conclusion: "Next time you are making a presentation, set aside extra time to work on your slides, not just to make them but to think about them and how they will interact with what you will say. If we challenge ourselves and our audiences, we will not only have more interesting presentations, but we will all get our brains working a little more."

HOWTO give a good presentation

Aaron Schmidt posted this on October 23, 2008 at walking paper. It's worth clicking on that link to read not only the full post but also the thoughtful comments (two dozen as of mid-November 2008). A few abbreviated points from Schmidt's list, which is very much based on PowerPoint style:

  • Remember that you’re not giving a presentation. What you are doing is sharing ideas and hopefully trying to convince people of something...
  • Please don’t fill your slides with words. Find some relevant and pretty pictures to support what you’re saying...Your presentation should be very incomplete without your narration.
  • Instead of spending time practicing a presentation, use the time to learn more about the subject...
  • Leave plenty of time for that Q&A session because it’ll probably be much more interesting than your prepared remarks...
  • Quoting other people looks you make smart.
  • Don’t be nervous. The people you’re talking to aren’t out to get you...
  • Say something outrageous...
  • ...The podium is not your friend.

There's much more to this discussion.

Giving effective presentations

By Peter Bromberg, excerpted and adapted from this October 29, 2008 post at Library garden--which begins by linking to Schmidt's post. Note: These are brief excerpts.

I prefer to frame this as giving "effective" presentations rather than "good" ones because effective implies that you're actually trying to, well, have an effect. And I think that one of the most important elements of any presentation--the element that makes it much more likely that your presentation will be effective--happens before you've written one word or found one cool image for your powerpoint. The most important element is asking the question, "What do I want people to do as a result of seeing/hearing my presentation?"...

There are many variables that will affect how you craft your presentation. Just a few of them:

  • Who will be in the audience? Is it heterogeneous or homogeneous? Are there certain people in the audience with more influence that I would like to reach?
  • How large is the audience? Will I get to mingle? Am I miked, or is it more intimate?...
  • What is their predisposition to change their behavior? Are they a friendly or resistant audience
  • What is their knowledge level?
  • How much time will I have to present?
  • How much other information is being thrown at them (am I the main act, or one presentation of many?...
  • Will the presentation, or parts of it, be archived or made available online after the fact? Do I intend this to ever be seen again?
  • Is the presentation intended to be instructional? provocative? informative? heretical? inspiring? challenging?

I'm sure you can think of more variables that you've considered when crafting your own presentations. The important thing is to continually refocus yourself on what you are trying to achieve and critically evaluate the content and sequencing of your presentation to make sure everything supports and nothing detracts from your goal.

A few other ideas that may enhance the effectiveness of your presentation:

  • Share your presentation with others before you do it and get feedback to see what's working and what isn't...
  • If it's appropriate to the presentation, try to make it as interactive as possible. Ask questions. Encourage audience members to talk to each other...
  • Conclude the presentation with a challenge or a request. Ask something of the audience. Ask them to commit to doing one thing differently.
Be sure to read the comments on this post as well; they add several useful notes.

Smart presentations: Getting rid of butterflies

By Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest September 2008

Do you get “butterflies” before a presentation? Here’s how to turn your nervous energy into delivery power using techniques from Broadway!

  1. Don’t fight the feeling, it’s natural. “Butterflies” are actually “our bodies getting ready to perform,” “Actors call this ‘performance energy’.”
  2. Move around, don’t just sit and stew. Talk to other people, admire the pictures on the walls—“anything to channel some of that energy.” If you can’t move around, sit still, smile and “take slow breaths.”
  3. Visualize your opening and closing. Picture yourself as “calm and in control.” Imagine a smooth opening and a strong finish.

“Just remember: it’s performance energy you’re feeling, not nervousness. Then go out and shine!”

(John Windsor, “Smart presentations: About those butterflies,” Sales & Marketing Management’s ManageSmarter, Sept. 4, 2008.)

Changing the traditional triad

By Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest April 2008

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:

  1. Address their interests at the start. "Make it clear from your first slide...that this is about their needs, interests and goals."
  2. Paint a picture of how things can be. Give them as rich an image as you can early on.
  3. 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)?

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 fourth bullet below.

Your turn: Talk about it

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