This is the last post in a 10-post series on tips for effective presentations. For an explanation as to why I’m adding this series to a data-oriented blog, see the intro to the first post in the series. To view other tips in the series, click here.

Tip No. 10: Respect the Audience

This last tip is more of a perspective than a tip.

It’s last because it’s the tip that drives the reason for paying attention to all of the other tips.

It’s last because it’s a tip that is all too often flagrantly ignored.

It’s last because it can be a little scary.

The experience that prompted me to write this series was my participation in the inaugural #ACCELERATE conference in San Francisco last fall. As it turned out, I was the last presenter of the day — one of the 5-minute Super #ACCELERATE presentations.

Here’s one way I could have viewed my presentation:

It’s only 5 minutes, so I should try to do something pretty solid, but, if it falls flat, it’s only a small fraction of the overall conference.

Here’s how I actually viewed the presentation:

 It’s 5 minutes, but it’s 5 minutes in front of of 300 people, so that’s actually 1500 minutes, or 25 hours. If I swag that the fully loaded cost of the members of the audience is, on average, $50/hour, then I need to deliver a $1,250 presentation!

Okay, so it’s a little tough to really make this math work is a 5-minute presentation, but think about a 20-minute presentation ($5,000) or a 30-minute presentation ($7,500) or an hour-long presentation ($15,000). Change the hourly cost however you see fit, but do the mental exercise to consider the opportunity cost of the presentation — the total amount that is being invested by the audience members who could be doing something else rather than listening to you present. That is the amount of value you should fully commit to delivering with your presentation.

Each member of the audience is paying to watch your presentation, regardless of whether they had to pay a monetary fee to sit through it.

They’re paying with a finite and valuable commodity: their time.

Recognize that. Respect that. Do everything you can to make it a worthwhile investment on their part.

Photo by Eric T. Peterson

This is the ninth post in a 10-post series on tips for effective presentations. For an explanation as to why I’m adding this series to a data-oriented blog, see the intro to the first post in the series. To view other tips in the series, click here.

Tip No. 9: Make it Personal, Descriptive, and Tangible

Imagine someone you know giving a presentation about how to present effectively and saying the following:

“Studies have shown that the most effective presentations incorporate personal anecdotes and are descriptive and tangible. This increases the likelihood of the audience being engaged and, thus, actually paying attention to the content being presented. You should really try to come up with things that have happened to you or that you have done and relate those to the audience so that they are more interested in you, which means they are more likely to pay attention, which means they will be more likely to retain what you have presented. You should also avoid abstract examples — abstractions are harder for the brain to process, and it’s easy for the brain’s subconscious to simply give up and zone out.”

Now, imagine someone covering the same material, but doing it as follows:

“I once had to give a presentation to 300 co-workers at my company’s annual meeting. I had five minutes to talk about measurement and analytics, which I knew was a topic that wasn’t inherently of interest to the group. This was one of a series of five back-to-back presentations in a modified Pechu Kucha format — 15 slides, with the slides auto-advancing every 20 seconds. I came up with the idea to use my 5-month, 2,100-mile backpacking trip form Georgia to Maine on the Appalachian Trail as an underlying theme to stitch together the 2 points I was trying to drive home in my 5-minute talk. It turned out to be an incredibly effective presentation, which, almost 2 years later, people still remember and reference. You see, by incorporating a personal anecdote that I could relate to the topic I was covering, I actually made the content more engaging and, thus, more memorable.”

Which of the above presentations-about-presenting do you think would be more likely to “stick”?

In their book  Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip and Dan Heath work through an acronym — S.U.C.C.E.S. — as to what it takes to effectively convey ideas. While the book goes well beyond presentations, their mnemonic nails this tip pretty well:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

Really, this tip is about concrete, credible, emotional, and stories. It’s totally, totally, totally fine to start developing your presentation using abstractions. That’s probably what you’re going to have written down when you come up with your answer to the question: “What do I want the audience to take away from my presentation?” (Tip No. 7). The trick is to identify every generality and abstraction in the flow of your presentation and try to come up with a way to make each one more tangible, either by adding in specific examples or by introducing an analogy (personal or otherwise). Not only will this make your presentation more memorable, it’s fun (and it can really help when it comes to tracking down meaningful images — Tip No. 3!).

Three examples (yeah, I damn well better include tangible examples, right?) of this tip in practice from the three guys at Analytics Demystified:

• Eric Peterson presents on how he works with Best Buy to re-tool their analytics program: he co-presents with Best Buy (tangible example), and he uses a “house” analogy to illustrate, with pictures of ways houses can evolve (additions) as well as be rebuilt (when needing a new foundation or entirely new floor plan)
• John Lovett talks about his history as a licensed skipper (personal anecdote) and then uses naval navigation as an analogy for developing social media metrics programs
• Adam Greco uses a chess analogy to describe some of the key aspects of implementing a successful web analytics program…and relates that his younger son beat him at the game (both a personal anecdote…and one that he then ties back to web analytics)

As with all of the other tips in this series, the key to this one is that the goal isn’t simply “entertainment,” but, rather, relating examples and anecdotes that reinforce your key message.

Picture by Steve Snodgrass (modified by me to put the circle-slashon it, and, to be
clear, it’s making a point — I actually think the original piece is pretty cool)

This is the seventh post in a 10-post series on tips for effective presentations. For an explanation as to why I’m adding this series to a data-oriented blog, see the intro to the first post in the series. To view other tips in the series, click here.

Tip No. 7: Be Memorable By Identifying the Memory

This tip is really about simplicity and clarity. Accept at the outset that only a fraction of what you present is going to be retained by the audience, so it’s much better to have a small handful of key takeaways and then spend your time reinforcing those points.

The earlier in the development of your presentation that you clearly articulate for yourself what it is you want your audience to take away, the better off the presentation will be.

This is such an easy point to skip that, well, most presenters do!

The process that is required in order for information to get from a presenter’s mouth all the way to an audience member’s long-term memory requires multiple steps:

1. The material first gets captured/absorbed by iconic memory, which has a sub-second retention time
2. If the person is “paying attention,” the information will then be transferred into short-term memory, which lasts only a few seconds, but is where it can be consciously considered
3. If the material that is in short-term memory is sufficiently repeated and reinforced by the audience member’s own cognitive processing, it will actually make it into long-term memory so that it can be recalled the next day, next week, or next month

Bringing focus to the presentation and not being overly ambitious about how much information you want to convey enables you to build a presentation that repeats and reinforces the key points sufficiently that they are more likely to make it to the long-term memory banks of your audience.

Over the past few years, almost every formal presentation I have developed has started with me jotting down in my notebook the question, “What do I want the audience to take away from the presentation?” I then take multiple stabs at answering the question clearly and succinctly in writing (often revisiting my answer over several days in brief spurts). It can be surprisingly difficult, but it’s an exercise well worth the effort!

The answer to this question becomes a recurring litmus test for everything that goes into the presentation:

• Does content that is being considered speak directly to the desired takeaways?
• If not, is the content critical supporting information for the takeaways?

I can point to cases where a picture, diagram, or point that was one of the first things I put into a slide for a presentation — and was an idea or concept that actually sparked the whole idea for the presentation — ultimately got dropped when I considered it against these questions. This can be really tough, as it can means dropping content that is clever or insightful…but that is ancillary and nonessential. Dropping this content is the right thing to do — otherwise, you risk having your audience completely miss (or fail to retain) the fundamental purpose of the presentation.

For an hour-long presentation, aiming for 2-3 key takeaways is about right. That may sound like an unduly small number, but it’s reality. Think about the last presentation you sat through and jot down the main points. How long is your list?

The more focused your presentation is, and the more clear you are on the key points that you want your audience to retain, the better your presentation will be.

This is the sixth post in a 10-post series on tips for effective presentations. For an explanation as to why I’m adding this series to a data-oriented blog, see the intro to the first post in the series. To view other tips in the series, click here.

Tip No. 6: Bring the Energy of a Dinner or Bar Conversation

We’ve all seen it happen time and time again: someone who we personally know to be energetic, outspoken, and lively in 1-on-1 and small group conversations…speaks in the driest of monotones when delivering formally prepared presentations.

Few things kill a presentation’s impact more quickly than a nuclear blast of impassivity from the presenter

It’s understandable why this happens — it’s a chain reaction:

1. Anxiety about the importance of getting the presentation “right” ups our caution level
2. The natural way that humans react to caution is to be tentative
3. In a public speaking situation, tentativeness manifests itself as a low voice with limited modulation, as well as minimal physical movement

Our brains say, “Tread carefully! You’re walking a tightrope and don’t want to do anything risky! One misstep and you will catastrophically plummet into the Presentation Disaster Chasm!”

Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where our natural instincts as to how to be “safe” actually lead to disaster. Think about when you were a kid and first learning to ride a bike. Because the bike was wobbly, your instinct was to go slow…which made the bike more wobbly, because the gyroscopic action of the wheels needed faster rotation to kick in and provide stability. Presenting is similar — if you force yourself to be “the animated you,” you will quickly reap the benefits:

1. The energy you exhibit on stage will add energy to your audience
2. The audience will make eye contact and “lean forward” to see what you are so energized about
3. That energy from the audience will feed back to you, and you will be off and rolling!

I know this sounds a little hokey, but, if you take Tip No. 2 to heart and analyze presenters who are ineffective, consider them through the lens of this tip. How often is the person who is presenting noticeably less energized than you know that person to be?

The fact is, you are going to come across to your audience as being less energetic than you personally feel you are being. That’s because you are likely operating with a slight shot of adrenalin, so you feel more energy as you speak than you are necessarily showing.

There are several non-exclusive ways to apply this tip:

• Be aware of it — most people don’t realize how passive and monotonal they are being when they are on stage
• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse! (see Tip No. 5) — as you gain confidence with the flow of your presentation and your content, it becomes infinitely easier to focus on your expressiveness
• While you’re rehearsing, look for opportunities to use a hand gesture, a facial expression change, a change in the volume or tone of your voice, or other ways to alter your physical and audio presence to add emphasis
• Video tape yourself rehearsing (I’ve never actually done that…but, as digital video becomes more and more accessible, I fully expect to start!)

This doesn’t mean go crazy and jump around all over the stage, nor does it mean to step wildly outside of your own natural character. But, a little bit of energy goes a long way, and, chances are, you’re not going to overdo it. Bring the energy!

Photo by Eustaquio Santimano

This is the fifth post in a 10-post series on tips for effective presentations. For an explanation as to why I’m adding this series to a data-oriented blog, see the intro to the first post in the series. To view other tips in the series, click here.

Tip No. 5: Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse. And then Rehearse Some More!

At the Web Analytics Wednesday in San Francisco the night before #ACCELERATE, June Dershewitz — one of the 20-minute session presenters — commented that her presentation was running right at 17 minutes. I was struck by the comment, because, like June, I knew that my 5-minute presentation was running right around 4:55, give or take 10 seconds.

Not surprisingly, June was relaxed as she spoke, the presentation flowed smoothly, and she ended comfortably on time. I followed up with her afterwards to confirm some of the details of her prep work, and she responded:

My presentation ran 17 minutes when I rehearsed it (which I did quite a few times). My friend and colleague Kuntal Goradia (one of the 5-minute speakers) and I practiced our speeches on each other – and anyone else who would listen – for about 2 weeks leading up to the conference. Our final rehearsal took place at 10:30pm the night before the conference, after we left WAW.

The point of rehearsal is by no means simply to ensure you will stay within any specified time limits. Rehearsal has a wealth of benefits:

• It forces you to verbalize the material — you will be surprised how certain parts of your presentation have great visual support on the slide and are very clear in your head…but then come out of your mouth awkwardly.
• It helps get you so familiar with the slides and the flow that you truly don’t need to glance at the presentation for a reference or reminder as to where you are
• It helps you identify where the flow doesn’t quite work, where the visual material doesn’t quite support the spoken delivery, and where the core of a specific point actually needs to be altered — all of which lead to opportunities to adjust the slides themselves to support a more effective flow
• It builds your confidence; once you know that you will be on time and you know when the key points are coming up and you know the flow…you can focus on engaging the audience rather than focusing on ancillary details
• It enables you to practice “the physical” — where a slowing of the pace of the delivery, a simple (or dramatic hand gesture), a cock of the head, might really work

To be clear, the point of rehearsal is explicitly not to memorize your delivery verbatim. If you do that, then you will actually introduce more anxiety, as you will know that you will be “lost” if you forget a portion of the memorization. And, the delivery will likely come across as somewhat stilted, as the last half-dozen run-throughs will preclude any editing as you focus on rote memorization rather than polishing the content and delivery!

Obviously, rehearsals take time, and the longer the presentation, the longer it takes for a single run-through. For any presentation that is an hour or less, I recommend at least 6-10 “out loud” rehearsals. You don’t necessarily need a live audience for more than 1 or 2 of those (you do need to run through it in front of at least one person at least once — even better if you can get 2 or 3 people, ask them to take notes, and get their feedback), and you don’t necessarily need to be standing in a conference room with projected slides while you do it. I actually try to do run-throughs in a range of different situations — while driving (you can’t look at the slides when you’re looking at the road!), in a couple of different conference rooms, even sitting on a couch with my wife using my laptop as the “projector” (I have an awesome wife). By mixing up the environments, I’m conditioned to know that it’s the content that matters — not the specifics of the stage, projector, and seating configuration of the audience.

Still, a lot of my rehearsal occurs “in the gaps” — it’s almost impossible to carve out time in the middle of a busy work day to step away and rehearse, so I’ll often arrive at work a little early leading up to a big presentation and do a run-through before firing up my email. I’ll often mix that up with run-throughs at the end of the day just before I head home. It’s not that hard to find rehearsal time, in my experience, and it quickly becomes a habit — where you want to do another run-through because you’ve had a thought as to how you can clean up a bumpy spot or two.

Above all, though, rehearsal is about respect for the audience. No Broadway show — no high school play, for that matter — opens the doors for an audience on the first day the troupe gathers. There’s a reason for that, and that reason applies just as much to formal presentations as it does to plays — practice makes the delivery better.

For more tips on rehearsing for presentations, check out this post by Nancy Duarte.

This is the fourth post in a 10-post series on tips for effective presentations. For an explanation as to why I’m adding this series to a data-oriented blog, see the intro to the first post in the series. To view other tips in the series, click here.

Tip No. 4: Go with A Flow

Avoid the temptation to make a big list of things you want to cover and then simply laying them out in a somewhat logical sequence. You will wind up with partial non-sequiturs, and each abrupt shift in topic will give your audience a golden opportunity to tune you out.

Be leery of a narrative that looks like this, though:

1. We had this problem
2. I set out to solve the problem by exploring a whole lot of things (that I’ll now list for you)
3. I got to an answer
4. Here is the answer

While, yes, that is a logical narrative, in that it uses the sequential flow of your personal history, and it seems somewhat cinematic, in that it builds to a climax (“Ta-DA!!! The. ANSWER!”)…it’s often a narrative flow that is disconnected from the interests of your audience.

This, I realize, is one of the tougher tips to put into practice, because it is so situational. But, I’ve had success with a few different approaches here:

• Use a personal anecdote or experience as a unifying theme (more on this in Tip No. 9) — the key here is to make sure that the link between that experience and the topic at hand is real; typically, this will be through an analogy of some sort, so make sure the analogy holds to a reasonable extent
• Different aspects of a single core point — in some cases, there is truly one core idea that you are trying to convey, and the presentation is simply exploring different aspects of the idea; in these situations, you can think of your presentation as a diagram with a single idea in a circle in the center with each aspect listed in a spoke coming out of the circle; you may even want to sketch  it out this way to think through what the logical sequence of those different aspects is
• Along the same lines as the above, spending some time diagramming out your material in a non-outline format makes sense. Does it fit in a 2×2 matrix? A pyramid? A circular process? You may find that the diagram winds up as supporting imagery for the presentation, but that is by no means the goal — you’re simply looking to identify an optimal structure for the content so that, when you convert it to a linear model (because presentations happen in real time, and real time is linear), you have the best chance of doing that in a way that flows smoothly

Don’t be afraid to adjust the flow over time — you will find out as you rehearse (Tip No. 5) that there are hiccups in the flow, and adjusting the sequence of content and how you bridge from one point to another will very likely necessitate changing the order in which the material gets presented. That’s okay! The more a presentation flows, the easier it will be for the audience to focus, as they will not need to spend brain cycles simply adjusting from a jarring transition from one point to the next.

Photo by me

This is the third post in a 10-post series on tips for effective presentations. For an explanation as to why I’m adding this series to a data-oriented blog, see the intro to the first post in the series. To view other tips in the series, click here.

Tip No. 3: NO SLIDEUMENTS (a Picture IS Worth 1,000 Words!)

Garr Reynolds (aka, “Presentation Zen”) coined the term “slideument” for a presentation that really was a prose document delivered in slide format. These are both terrible and the most common form of presentation that exists in today’s workplace.

It’s perfectly understandable! You start by trying to get your thoughts down on paper, and PowerPoint provides a nice mechanism for doing that. You then pour through the outline you’ve created and tweak and tune and add until you have all of your points laid out. Then (and this is the disastrous next step):

You start adding images or diagrams to make the presentation “less text-heavy.”

Aiming for being less text-heavy is great…but there are two ways to go about that:

• The Wrong Way: add non-text elements
• The Right Way: remove text!

Now, if you’ve been doing your work with Tip No. 2, you’ll realize that one of the presentation killers is a text-heavy slide. Evenif the presenter doesn’t just read the bullet points off, you can’t read and listen at the same time, so, at best, you do a half-ass job at both! There’s cognitive research to back me up on this (and I’m going to promptly fail to reference any specifics, other than saying that I’m pretty sure John Medina covers this in Brain Rules).

Here’s the technique I use when I’ve got text-heavy slides:

1. I cut all the text and paste it into the notes
2. I read through the text and try to envision what one or two keywords most sum up what they’re saying
3. I go to http://flickr.com/creativecommons and start searching (and I search hard – I don’t just grab the first image that seems remotely relevant; I use the “Interesting” option to sort the search results and I look for pictures that are evocative in their own right while aligning with the point I want to make).
4. I make the image take up the entire slide (without distorting it – learn to use the “crop” functionality in PowerPoint, people!)
5. Sometimes I then overlay the image with a single 1-8 word phrase (in a high-contrast color so it’s easily readable)

Now, the objection I hear when I lobby for this approach is often, “But this presentation is going to get sent around and reviewed! I’ve got to have all of my points written out so that it works as a standalone document without me presenting it!” Two points on that:

• If you’re printing it to give to someone, print it with the notes displayed. Voila! Objection muted!
• If there really is a lot of detail that is core to the content, fire up MS Word and write it up that way! Then, circulate the Word document and use the presentation only when you are actually presenting the material in person.

Having laid out the absolutes in this tip, I’ll now back off a little bit and note that this approach should be the goal…but you will certainly find cases for deviating from it here and there. Be leery, though, of telling yourself that this tip simply doesn’t apply at all to your entire presentation.

Photo by dynamist

This is the second post in a 10-post series on tips for effective presentations. For an explanation as to why I’m adding this series to a data-oriented blog, see the intro to the first post in the series. To view other tips in the series, click here.

Tip No. 2: Pay Attention to What Doesn’t Work

This tip is a direct complement to Tip No. 1. You simply cannot be a working professional in 2012 without being subjected to truly awful, uninspiring, fight-to-stay-awake presentations. As you mentally yawn, keep your eyelids open by asking yourself, “What, specifically, is making the presentation so bad?”

The sad truth is that the plethora of awful presentations have an insidious side effect:

They “teach” us how to present!

It’s unfortunate, but it’s reality. When the last five presentations you saw were all text-heavy, bullet-heavy, monotone-delivered snoozers and you fire up PowerPoint to start on your own presentation…you’ve been trained to start building an outline, dropping in bullets, developing a logical sequence, making sure everything you want to say is captured on a slide, and…BOOM!…you’ve just created your own snoozer.

Consciously critique the bad presentations you sit through. Vow to never, never, NEVER do the things that you identify as not working.

Does this critical view make you something of an elitist? Sadly, it does. But, if you’re truly doing it to improve your own presentation skills, that’s okay.

Photo by markhillary

Rolling into the new year, I’m finally getting around to writing up some thoughts that I’ve been mulling over for a month or so on the subject of effective presenting. This is a bit off-topic for this blog, but I’ll tie it back to digital analytics in two ways:

• A recurring theme in the analytics community is that analysts have to “tell stories with the data” rather than simply throw a bunch of charts into a presentation and expect business users to swoon. To tell stories with data you first have to be able to tell stories, and presentations are one form of storytelling.
• The next #ACCELERATE event is coming up in Chicago in April…and what better way to lobby for a 20-minute slot than to post a public outline of what I could present?

While the second point is explicitly tongue-in-cheek, the inspiration for this series was the inaugural #ACCELERATE event where, in my view, the quality of the presentations was a little disappointing. Having crossed the 4-decade mark, and having both given and seen countless presentations, I’m going to wax pedantic for the next 10 days. Take it or leave it. There are professional presentation coaches (Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds being two of my favorites) who have studied the subject much more than I have, and those experts have written extensively on the subject…but I’m still going to take my shot at a “10 Tips” list. I’ll be publishing one tip per weekday because, after writing them all, I found myself in a similar boat as Ben Gaines found himself in after writing up Ten Things Your Vendor Wishes You Did Better — when you care about a topic and try to write up “10 tips”…it’s hard to be succinct! You can view the complete series of tips here.

Tip No. 1: Watch What Works

In his recap of #ACCELERATE, Corry Prohens noted that Craig Burgess had observed that the event had a secondary benefit, in that it allowed analysts to watch a slew of presentations and observe the styles and techniques that were most effective. To build on that, I say, watch some TED Talks. Next week, watch some more! And the following week, a few more! It really doesn’t matter which ones you watch. TED has so much prestige and the organizers do such a good job of putting on consistently high quality events that the presenters really put in the time to deliver polished material (more on that in subsequent tips). It’s really rare to see a stinker of a presentation. And, keep in mind:

Most of the presenters are people who don’t publicly present on a regular basis (just like you)!

Watch at least a half-dozen talks and note the range of topics and presentation styles that all “work.” Think about why those presentations are engaging. Take inspiration from them! You can really watch any of them, but, if you’re just itching for some specifics, I recommend:

• Malcolm Gladwell’s spaghetti sauce talk
• Joe Sabia’s talk on the technology of storytelling
• Sunni Brown’s talk on doodling
• Hans Rosling’s presentation on world health that relied heavily on Gapminder

If you get into it, you may also want to watch Nancy Duarte’s talk (from TEDxEast) on why great communicators’ presentations are riveting and then read her post about how she prepared. TED Talks are by no means the only place to look for inspiration. We all have the 2 or 3 people inside our company that everyone hopes speaks at internal meetings. You look forward to watching them present, so, the next time you have that opportunity, put on your critical thinking cap and try to figure out why their presentations are engaging and compelling. The same thing can be said for any conference or event that you attend — when you catch yourself leaning forward a bit and really hanging on a presenter’s every word, take a step back and ask yourself, “Why?” In the digital analytics industry, there are some great examples:

• Eric Peterson exudes enthusiasm regardless of the topic or the format
• Avinash Kaushik converts his playful and whimsical written style into his presentations…and then somehow successfully augments them with the liberal use of profanity
• Jim Sterne leads off each eMetrics with a formal and polished talk…that stylistically will vary dramatically from one conference to the next

All three of these gentlemen have very different personalities, perspective, and presentation styles. Your goal is not to pick one of their styles and copy it, but, rather, to pick out stylistic details and techniques that resonate with you as possible tools for your own presentation toolkit. You absolutely want to develop a style that fits who you are, but that doesn’t mean you have to develop that style entirely from scratch. Most great chefs, after all, had formal training and/or studied under other chefs, and, yet, they developed a cooking style that was uniquely theirs.