Make a Bigger Impression when Presenting

Make a Bigger Impression when Presenting

(Be on the envelope, not the stamp!)

I was recently asked to provide some feedback to researchers presenting their projects.

My overall impression was as follows:

Why must the slide take up the whole screen with the presenter in the top corner, the size of a postage stamp?

Universities, in particular, use dreadful communication platforms to host their researchers/student engagement with the outside world.

It’s evident to me that ‘People buy people, not Slides’ yet years after the development of platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, to name but a few, we are still left struggling to see the presenter, never mind engage with them.

I believe there are three purposes for a presentation;

• Inform the minds
• Change the will
• Touch the heart

(All three should have an element of entertainment if you wish to be successful)

IDEALLY THE PREPARATION SHOULD START AS FOLLOWS:

1. Choose which purpose applies to you and your audience.
   2. Research the audience. Who is the person you most want to influence?
   3. Create a story(s) and tell it in a way that is believable and builds trust in you and your idea.
   4. Then, and only then, should you go about selecting images and creating the slide deck?

“START WITH A STORY, NOT THE SLIDES”

“A speaker who does not strike oil in ten minutes should stop boring”

Louis Nizer

Create exciting conversations

I believe a presentation should be an exciting conversation delivered with energy and enthusiasm and supported by some imaginative visual slides with a minimum of text.

If a person cannot read a slide in ten seconds, you have too much text!

By Executive Coach Andrew Keogh of Aristo.ie