Quick Practical, Tactical Tips for Presentations | Hacker News Reader

Quick Practical, Tactical Tips for Presentations

bothsidesofthetable.com

34 pointshedgehog6 comments

I have to disagree with number 4:

  4. Don’t have hand outs

unless we qualify it some. In certain cases, introductions, solving a problem etc then the handouts may be a problem. But when briefing someone, especially someone who is busy a handout allows them to quickly find information they are looking for so that they can request clarification/give you feedback - which is the point of the meeting.

Tufte makes this argument much better than I can, it is his field, in the essay The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp

but overall i think it's pretty good advice, I especially like point 2 - avoid home team, away team dynamics.

In particular, if the material on the handout is material you want your audience to refer to again, by working through the handout in a presentation you are making it easier for your audience to do that.

I sometimes have handouts, but I, well... hand them out at the end of the presentation.

In 20 years of giving & receiving presentations I can tell you that this is actually the second most important advice I can give: if you can avoid handouts do so. (the most important is the importance of "the narrative" which I'm going to write about in the next week or two on http://www.bothsid.es).

It is your job to control the tempo & information in the meeting and handouts destroy that. I do sometimes give them after the meeting.

If you're not doing an overhead projector presentation then I agree that you need to give handouts. If a projector - there's no feedback that the other person could give you with paper in front of them that they couldn't with a handout unless it's detailed financial or other information (you could hand this out as you get to that place in the presentation).

For techies, many presentations come with demos. If you running a demo:

* Don't swing your mouse cursor around. It is very distracting. Keep it still unless you are really doing something with it.

* Tools such as OmniDazzle helps. But don't overdo it and don't use it if you can't master it

* Sometimes it's useful to highlight a piece of text by selecting it with your mouse cursor so the audience know what you are referring to (OmniDazzle helps)

* If you have a scripted demo, do screenshots in powerpoint and annotate it as a backup. If you don't have a scripted demo.. well you aren't prepared to do a demo

* Demo with data/scenarios that the audience can relate to or understand.

* Bring your own device for connectivity, be it a HSDPA modem or a phone that lets you tether.

* If things go wrong, move on, quickly. Don't try and retry.

* Nobody can read fine print in on your demo screen. Many web browsers can zoom nicely with the + key.

* Watch out for the screen resolution of the projector (it might be too low or too high and not match your application's assumptions).

* Look and talk to the audience. Not to your laptop.

* Demos are often easier to do than presentations if you are a techie. After all, you built it or you know the details.

Slightly less fancy than Omnidazzle, but for windows dev presentations the free and functional zoomit from sysinternals is not too bad http://live.sysinternals.com/ZoomIt.exe

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