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20051108 Tuesday November 08, 2005

Effective Presentations At Virtuas today, we had a workshop from Joel Hochberger of Effective Presentations. This was a very valuable training course that I learned a lot from. We started out by doing short presentations that were videotaped and criticized by other folks in the class. It was interesting to see myself speaking on video because I did a lot of "umms" and "ya knows" that weren't noticed by me or the audience.

After learning to pause more, quit shifting and have better eye contact - we moved on to learning how to better organize our presentations. Joel gave us some great tips that I should be able to really benefit from. The main gist was that you can easily create better presentations by simply thinking from the listeners perspective. What is the main benefit the listener derives from your idea?

The other two things that really stuck with me were: 1) ask for action from your listener (what they must do to achieve the benefits of your idea) and 2) summarize your presentation following audience questions. If you get a chance to attend one of Joel's workshops, I'd definitely recommend it. Posted in General at Nov 08 2005, 09:49:03 PM MST 5 Comments

Comments:

Now I'm really going to expect some impressive presentations from you at this weekends NFJS conference. ;)

Posted by Ryan on November 09, 2005 at 09:06 AM MST #

As you should. ;-)

Posted by Matt Raible on November 09, 2005 at 02:00 PM MST #

So are you able to rapid fire an entire 2 hour presentation now? Looks like you might need some more images from Google. ;-)

Posted by Tom Bender on November 09, 2005 at 04:03 PM MST #

Actually, there wasn't a whole lot of talk about the rapid fire technique. Joe did say that entertainment is useful, but I think a well-organized presentation might have the same effect. The big thing is to remember that your audience doesn't give a rat's ass about you - they're selfish and they came to your presentation to better themselves. As a presenter, it's your job to effectively communicate your idea - that's it.

One problem with presenting at conferences in particular is that you're supposed to present for an hour (or more). It'd be nice if presentations were only as long as you needed them to be in order to effectively communicate your message. The Gettysburg Address was only a few minutes long and Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" was only 6 minutes long.

Posted by Matt Raible on November 09, 2005 at 04:14 PM MST #

Is it always true that you're audience doesn't give a rat's ass about you? I'm finding myself shlepping my own ass to Florida this December to listen to some Matt Raible guy whose blog I've been reading for a couple of years now ... I mean don't get me wrong, I am interested in what he has to say as well, but...

Posted by Michael C. Clark on November 11, 2005 at 04:15 PM MST #

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Matt Raible is a Web Architecture Consultant specializing in open source frameworks.
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