While going thru the process of putting the presentation for my China trip (and describing it to a friend part way through the process), it occurred to me that I have a specific method that I seem to follow each time.
Before I describe it, I should point out that there are really two types of presentations I've had to create over the last few years: new and derived.
As I thought about this, it occurred to me that I seem to find myself presenting over and over on subjects in the same specific topic area for roughly 9 to 24 months before I move on to something newer and different. Those phases, unsurprisingly, coincide with my role at work at the time.
Past phases were roughly:
- MySQL, Perl, and Open Source in general
- Search/Yahoo and Social Media
- RSS, Blogging, and Corporate Blogging
As you might expect, this time around it's about Developer Networks, APIs, Web Services, and Platforms.
I should also point out that this isn't exactly a pre-meditated strategy or even a good way to work. But it is what I find myself doing each time.
New Presentations
When I transition from speaking about one area to another, I end up thrashing about quite a bit because I haven't really wrapped my head around what exactly I'm trying to get across, how to do it, what examples to use, the necessary context and bigger picture issues, and what other relationships I can draw.
Though I've been back in the Yahoo! Developer Network for about nine months now (how time flies!), I haven't had to do any big formal slide shows yet. Instead I've been doing a lot of demos and a few panel discussions that require far less preparation.
So what happens is I end up putting it off until the deadline is fairly close. Close enough than I can feel the pressure. I just avoid doing anything until I can't wait much longer. Then I sit down with a pen and paper to write out ideas in a fairly free-form bullet list. Then I annotate and expand the ideas until the paper is unreadable to anyone but me. And I usually bounce a few ideas off people at this point too.
With that done, I fire up PowerPoint in outline mode (never start by looking at what the slides will look like) and try to transfer those thoughts to digital form, organizing them along the way. I then end up with either far too many proto-slides or not nearly enough. That's when I have to figure out what needs to be expanded with more detail or glossed over and summarized at a higher level. This takes a lot of time.
Depending on the topic and audience, I use a rule of thumb for slides: 3-7 minutes per slide when it comes time to present, not including the title slide and the traditional "Questions?" slide I stick at the end. This gives me a good target to work toward. I'll spend a few hours trying to really mold things into the right shape and size.
The second to last thing I do is worry about the appearance of the slides. I'll look for illustrations, photos, and screen shots I can include to lighten things up and distract from the text. Sometimes they're even relevant to the topic at hand.
Finally, on the way to the talk (if there's air travel involved), I'll sit down with a printed copy of my slides and make lots of little notes about points I'd like to mention on each slides. I don't always end up using the notes, but the exercise alone is very worthwhile anyway. It helps me to step back and see the whole presentation, including any holes or weird assumptions it may contain.
Derived Presentations
The second time I have to speak about something that I've spoke about before, I can often recycle a fair amount of the time, energy, and sometimes even the content from the first one. Even if I end up reusing a very small amount of the material, the mental stress I endured to create the first one resulted in much clearer thinking and distilled ideas.
Creating the second presentation is always far, far easier than the first. That one incentive not to change jobs too often, huh? :-)
The derived presentations come much faster but follow a very similar pattern. I start with the paper and finish by dropping pictures on slides that I'll eventually annotate with a pen right before the talk.
In both cases, I find it incredibly difficult to practice a talk before giving it. I don't know quite why, but without standing in front the actual audience it just doesn't work. Maybe it's because I know it doesn't really count. It's fake. Or maybe it's just that I need the feedback and pressure involved in a room full of people looking at you expectantly (or staring at the laptop screens, pretending you're not there).
Anyway, that's my story...
If you end up speaking in front of audiences on a semi-regular basis, is your preparation experience anything like mine?
Posted by jzawodn at May 14, 2007 11:58 AM
It would be great to see a sample slide from a presentation to see where you sit on the 'Apple' minimal through to the 'Microsoft' text heavy approach.
I noticed recently a lot of the presentations coming out of Yahoo!, such as in Brickhouse and also parts of Yahoo! UK, consist of just a hi-res photo (full screen) and a single word or shot set of words. Tom Coates does them a lot, I don't know whether his style has spread.
I followed you up until you got to PowerPoint. I'm not a PowerPoint snob, but I wait until I finish my presentation to determine if PowerPoint (or any other slide mechanism) is necessary.
My rule of thumb as an audience member is to give a presentation 10 points at the beginning. Then I subtract 1 point for each bullet point on screen. If, by the third slide, the presenter has run out of stars, I know this person has no idea how to give a presentation and I start to tune out, no matter how informative they might otherwise be.
Ben:
I will post a copy of the slides (either here or on the YDN site) once I'm back from the trip.
Right now they're a mix of Microsoft and Apple styles. Some feature a title and a very large image (screen shot, usually) while others are more text heavy.
First, a list of points I want to cover, in a text file. Move them around a bit so they're in the right order. Then I actually write my whole talk out longhand. The whole thing, beginning to end, jokes and pauses and all. Fiddle that so it comes out at about 60% of the length of time I'm actually presenting for. Then I make the slides, based on the written talk text. My slides are very minimal; black background, white text, one or two or three words per slide, or one picture. (Pinched from Larry Lessig, of course, that style.) Finally, I throw away the longhand version of the talk and present just from the slides. That's why the longhand written version is only 60% of the length; I always overrun...
Apropos of your pictures, in case you missed it on Digg: http://www.jumbojoke.com/the_king_of_speed_844.html.
Happy landings
Rob:
Yeah, I've heard that story before--didn't see it on Digg, but that has more to do with how rarely I visit digg. :-)
I think of how to solve the problems of the end users of my presentation. If I am able to solve even one of their problems, the rest of the presentation is a breeze (and they will come up and thank me afterwards).
Just my 2 cents...
You didn't explicitly state on step I know you take, but sadly, many presenters do not: identifying the target audience and their expectations.
Especially when the title of the talk has been stated in advance (such as for a presentation on a conference's schedule), the audience will certainly have fairly specific expectations. Make sure to meet them.
In the early days of the Perl Conference (1 and 2), I would attend talks that ended up being absolutely how-quick-can-I -get-out-of-here-without-being-rude horrible because the talk didn't match the title. The title might be "Advanced Perl Techniques" and the talk might end up being a recycled 18-month-old introduction to what had been new in Perl 5. The worst offenders were the "professional speakers" that presented at every conference around the country, because they'd just brush the dust off an old presentation, thinking that somehow being tangentially relevant made it appropriate.
In my case, I wouldn't even start to prepare a talk until the title was published, so I knew exactly what the expectations were. They tended to be well received, although because they were interactive (me, an overhead projector, and some pens), I didn't have prepared slides and as such, attendees didn't have copies to take home. Some people complained about that.
Jeremy--A bit crazy, but it would be interesting for you to tell us what you're actually DOING at Yahoo these days . . . managing, coding, advising, being a pundit? I.e., how does a presentation relate to what your 9 to 5 (or 7 to 7, whatever) is like these days.
Are you working on a new book?
And I thought it was just me. I happen to do darn close to the same exact thing. The stress is palpable as the deadline draws near, but this has the effect of getting me to focus incredibly intently as I consider every point that I want to make. I found your post via Jon Udell's note about how he does audio recording during walks to prepare for presentations.
I can completely relate to the out-loud practice being hard to do because I know it's not for real. I can only deliver to an audience if I deeply believe in what I'm telling them, so I rely less on preparing for that aspect of it than I do on making sure I cover the key points I want to deliver.
As one of the previous posts mentioned, I start with a combination of topic and audience.
Then I remind myself that, weeks later, people are only likely to remember a couple things. What would I like them to be able to do later on? to remember? to talk with other people about?
I'm told that people remember memorable stories longest (and then, after a moment, usually can recall the idea. So I then try to figure out what stories, anecdotes, research results or whatever will be memorable. At the same time, for each thing I want the audience to learn to do or to remember, I ask if there's something I can get them to do. I like asking audiences questions to which both they, and I, would like to hear their answers, for example. I often ask them to talk with one or two neighbors about the question, and then I take notes as some of them report their answers. (I make those notes and my slides available to them on the Web for their use later).
So stories and tasks are two of my elements of preparation. A third is creating a web resource for them, in advance, with references and resources. And the fourth element is preparing slides (which are usually my only notes for the talk).
My talks usually have to do with educational uses of technology, with evaluation of those applications and/or with how to help people learn to use the technologies.
As one of the previous posts mentioned, I start with a combination of topic and audience.
Then I remind myself that, weeks later, people are only likely to remember or do a couple things as a result of my talk. So what would I like them to be able to do later on? to remember? to talk with other people about?
People remember memorable stories much longer than facts or conceptual statement. So one element of my preparation is to figure out what stories, anecdotes, research results or whatever will be memorable.
Second element: 'learning by doing' is effective. So, for example, I develop questions to ask the audience, questions which both they, and I, would like to hear their answers. I often ask them to talk with one or two neighbors about the question, and then I take notes as some of them report their answers. (I make those notes and my slides available to them on the Web for their use later).
So stories and tasks are two of my elements of preparation. A third is creating a web resource for them, in advance, with references and resources.
The fourth element is preparing slides (which are usually my only notes for the talk).
I do all four of these in parallel.
Jeffrey, in defense of the frequent speakers, there is just no way to prepare a new presentation for every conference. When you speak 4 or 5 times a month you have to recycle things if you also have a real job. The other option is to speak less, of course, but it is really hard to say no to many of these smaller grassroot conferences put on by the various local communities.
I always have 1 or 2 new slides for every talk I give and over the course of about 10-12 months that means every slide has been replaced and my topic will have shifted in one direction or another.
I'll be in China with Jeremy on Friday as well, but the difference is that I have to make a trip to Chicago today, returning Wednesday before flying to China on Thursday arriving late Friday night. For someone who hates flying and programming I am not sure how I ended up constantly flying around talking about programming.
John:
Yeah, I should try to explain what I do, huh? :-)
You put in pictures afterwards to distract from the text? Why did you put in the text then in the first place?
My recommendation: Make it as visual as possible. Focus on pictures and explain everything verbally, but not written on the slides.
If you need to send the slides for later review, put the text into the comments field. This way you can view the slides and the text below them.
Also check out: www.presentationzen.com
Cheers,
Klaus
Well, what I do is start writing bullet points about what I want to say. Sometimes I give talks on subjects I know very little about and do tons of research....so I'm already coming at it from a newbie perspective. That helps a LOT, and I often will spend 8-10 hours on a 1 hour presentation.
My rule of thumb is 5 minutes per slide, meaning that if I have more than 15 slides (minus title and "Questions?" of course) for a 45 minute presentation I need to cut down.
The other rule I have is 3-4 bullet points per slide. And each bullet point should say enough to remind me and the viewer what I'm talking about. I don't often use pictures, graphs or charts but will when visualization is necessary.
Basically, my mentality is the slides should not distract people's attention from ME. Anyone can download slides, and I hate presentations where all the information is in the slides, because I can read an hour-long presentation in 15 minutes if that's the case. And I'd rather have people *thinking* about what I'm saying than thinking about the text or image on the screen.
I do write down every salient point I want to make in the notes as I'm writing the presentation, and at the end of every slide or every other slide I make sure I've said what I wanted to say.
Compare:
(30 MB movie file of a presentation) http://technocation.org/videos/mysqlsecurity2007_02_08small.wmv
with the slides:
http://www.sheeri.com/presentations/MySQLSecurity2007_02_08.swf
the slides are very minimalistic. There's nothing to do during the presentation but listen to me. :)
-Sheeri
Rasmus, I have no problem with recycled talks, but rather, with talks that don't fit the title. As a member of the audience paying to see the presentation advertised, I don't care about excuses.
I have no doubt one can recycle talks appropriately; the two times I've attended your talks were excellent examples.
