How To Present

1
How To Present

• Christine Robson
• November 20, 2007

2
Overview

• Material youre presenting
• Working with presentation software
• Avoiding chart junk
• Talking to your audience
• How to be convincing
• What to say (and not to say)
• Swapping between presenters

3
How to make good slides
4
Why make slides?

• Backdrop for your talk
• Defend yourself with hard numbers and quotes
• Helps visual vs. auditory learners
• Can be used as handouts

5
Convey Information

• Each slide presents a coherent thought
• Use concise bullets
• Each bullet must add information
• Use the tree structure for imbedded concepts
• i.e. for examples
• Useful for breaking down multi-part ideas

6
Whats wrong here?

• Overview
• The third quarter results clearly indicate an
  overwhelming success of our product when compared
  to the competitors products
• Much improved in 12-18 age ranges
• Slightly improved in 18-24 age ranges
• Need more market study in this age range,
  particularly the effects as high school students
  graduate
• Entire new market in 24-40 age ranges
• Overall this shows a dramatic increase in market
  potential
• This should be our new direction in 2008

7
Presenting your Data

• Remember Tufte
• Present data simply and concisely
• Avoid chart-junk and wasted ink
• A good picture should be worth a thousand words
• A mix of pictures and words is best

8
Data Points from GTME BSE division, Product lines
3E, TA5, 64C series, and R
Amazing!
The consistent data in the west and north regions
indicates that these markets are stable. By
contrast the high variability of the east region
clearly indicates a potential market to be tapped
for new revenue growth in 2008
9
Pets of 2nd grade students

• Where should Hammy, the class
• hamster, spend Thanksgiving?

10
Remember the grid!

• Your webpage layout used grids
• Dont abandon them now!
• Your presentation is like a website
• Each slide has a layout, like a page
• Keep consistency between slides

11
Remember the grid!

• Your webpage layout used grids
• Dont abandon them now!
• Your presentation is like a website
• Each slide has a layout, like a page
• Keep consistency between slides

12
Remember the grid!

• Your webpage layout used grids
• Dont abandon them now!
• Your presentation is like a website
• Each slide has a layout, like a page
• Keep consistency between slides

13
Most presentation software will help you
14
General Guidelines

• Keep your slides simple
• Two or three main points
• One chart at a time
• No chart junk!
• Limit yourself to 1 slide per minute
• Otherwise your audience cant keep up

15
Speaking
16
Talk to your audience

• Know your target audience
• Background Knowledge
• Expectations
• What they want to hear
• Who they will trust
• Look them in the eye
• Engage people and draw them in

17
Keeping up appearances

• Look act professional
• More people will believe you
• Be calm and relaxed
• Get a good nights sleep
• Do NOT over-caffeinate
• Stand up straight and dont fidget
• Harder then it sounds

18
Be Convincing

• Confidence is convincing
• Always sound like you know what youre talking
  about
• Admit when you dont know
• Good question
• Dont get defensive

19
You should never

• Put something on a slide without mentioning it
• audience will stop trusting you to tell them
  everything
• promotes reading your slides instead of listening
• Put up a chart without explaining it
• everyone is looking at it anyway
• Read your slides

20
Appearing United

• One person has to be the Master of Ceremonies
• First Last person to speak
• Can help with transitions between other speakers
• Refer to each other by name
• i.e. Thanks, John

21
Sharing the stage

• Every person speaking has their own role
• The audience will assume characters, i.e.
• the person who describes implementation is the
  techy
• the salesperson describes the user need
• Use this to divide content
• Keep the same person speaking about the same type
  of stuff

22
Practice makes perfect

• Practice transitions
• Between slides
• Between speakers
• Start with speaker notes, but know the material
  by heart
• Be prepared for interruptions
• Questions
• Technical problems

23
Practice with an audience

• A mirror is OK
• In front of friends is better
• Critical colleagues are best
• Keep yourself to your time limit

24
Nuts Bolts
25
Final presentation scheduling

• If your group presents on Tuesday, Dec. 4, your
  final report is due on Thursday, Dec. 6
• If your group presents on Thursday, Dec. 6, your
  final report is due on Tuesday, Dec. 4
• Send email with your preferences to cs160first
  come, first served