Presentation Skills

Excerpts from book: Presentation Zen

Creative
Pecha Kucha (means chatter) - 20 slides in 20 seconds per slide - Total 6 min 40 secs - if you can’t tell the essence of your story in less than seven minutes, then you probably shouldn’t be presenting anyway.
Planning - jot down ideas on a piece of paper first
Fundamentals questions to answer during planning stage
- How much time do I have?
- What’s the venue like?
- What time of the day will I be speaking?
- Who is the audience?
- What is their background?
- What do they expect of me?
- Why was I asked to speak?
- What do I want them to do?
- What visual medium is most appropriate for this particular situation and audience?
- What is the fundamental purpose of my talk?
- What’s the story here?
- And this is the most fundamental question of all, stripped down to its essence: What is the core point?
Summarizing all the above, bottom line questions to answer are What is your point? Why does it matter?
No more than 6 or 7 words per slide

3 steps to prepare a presentation
1. Prepare story board - before even opening the powerpoint, answer the following first * What information the reader needs? * In what order my slides will be shown? * What evidence do I need to support? * Prepare slides. After step 1, each slide has a single message that supports the overall argument. * Design the slides: Understand what needs to be highlighted in the slides.

Motivated senior management audience
Reader requires more details including text and statistical data to study the slide up close.
It may be a
- reading deck - standalone at a computer screen
- discussion deck - printed and discussed in a team meeting
- briefing deck - presented to a roomful of decision-makers

Prepare message
- What do I want to achieve?
- Why should it be done?
- When does it need to be done?
- How should it be done?
- Where should it be done?
- Who is receiving the information?
Tailor to suit the recipient
- Who is the receiver?
- What information do they need?
- What do they know about the subject?
- Are they on your side or do you have to win them over?
Delivery method
- Step-by-step approach
- Fast delivery
Practice
Prepare recipient

Deliver message – eye contact, right tone, talk slowly, watch & listen to audience
- Introduce your message – background and outlook
- Explain why it is important to the audience
- Speak clearly and confidently
- Body language
  - Head – keep it straight. Bent side or forward means apologetic.
  - Eyes – Do not stare or look passive
  - Hands – Don’t clench your fist or move arms all over
Get feedback
- ask open questions – typically the audience shouldn’t be able to answer these questions with yes or no answer
- observe facial expression
- ask them to repeat
- listen to audience feedback and recap what they said to ensure you understood

O’Reilly talk by Neil Ford
Never talk about the talk itself. e.g., I was working on this presentation till 2am last night.