Paulo Merson
You are going to give a technical presentation to colleagues at work? You submitted a proposal to talk at a conference and it got accepted? The presentation is online? In person? In any case, if you like me were not born a great speaker, don't worry. There are a few key tips that we can learn, practice, and apply to help us create and deliver a great technical presentation.
Prepare a presentation that will allow attendees to successfully apply your ideas and experiences in their organizations.
Audiences like illustrated slides better than text-heavy slides. Bulleted points should be no longer than two lines. Break long sentences into two bullets. If a slide has more than 5 or 6 bullets, consider splitting it into two slides. If the presentation will be recorded, there's less need for textual information in the slides. If only the slides will be shared for future reference, the content should make sense without the oral explanation.
Sensibly use pictures, graphs, tables, videos, callouts, animations, diagrams, and quotes to make your presentation more interesting. Imagery will improve attendees' retention and enjoyment. 😊
In live ONLINE presentations, remember that videos and even slide animations don't stream smoothly through screen sharing.
The tip states the obvious, but a common complaint is that the text is not readable, especially text in diagrams. If you use PowerPoint or a similar tool, here's a simple way to check readability: print your presentation in 2 slides-per-page format; if you can easily read the printouts, the slides should be readable on screen. 🤓
Another common complaint is that the presenter didn't cover all the slides or rushed through the final slides. If your session allows interaction throughout, be careful to cut short lengthy discussions. And above all, follow the next tip.
The secret to a great presentation is to practice, practice, practice. Rehearse your presentation at least two times to train yourself on the flow of ideas. Don’t forget to time it when rehearsing, and fine-tune the amount of material you can cover. If you practice in front of the mirror or camera, you can evaluate your body language and posture. If it's an important presentation, you can also present to colleagues and try to improve based on their feedback before D-day.
Here the tips may vary if the presentation is in person or online. The differences are indicated.
Your audience will be made up of your peers, and they want you to and will help you do a great job. Relax and be yourself, as in a conversation by the water cooler. Do not switch to "pres-en-ta-tion mode" and speak in a monotonic way like the Terminator (it's ok to dress up and look cool like him, though). 😎
It's your job to keep everyone awake and engaged, and that's not easy, especially after lunch. Be dynamic and energetic. ⚡ Show that you’re passionate about the topic. 😍 To establish a rapport with the audience, tell a relevant story or simply... smile. 🙂 Avoid reading notes or your slides. In some situations (keynotes, some webinars) questions are left to the end. Otherwise, you should stimulate participation with questions and comments at any time. Look for places in your presentation where you can ask something to participants, maybe their experience with what you just talked about. Periodically ask if there are any questions.
- IN PERSON:
- Make eye contact to random people in the room.
- At the very beginning or right after a break, if you're waiting for a few people, tell an interesting or funny story to kill time.
- ONLINE:
- Speak to the camera, which should be on all the time for the presenter.
- When someone says something in the chat window or out loud in the mic, say the person's name when you give your reply.
- It's quite common to miss a question or comment in the chat window. If there isn't anyone to help you monitor messages in the chat, invite everyone to use the mic to ask questions or to let you know of a message you missed in the chat. 😉
Especially at conferences, people step in or join virtual rooms for a short while to decide whether they want to stay for the whole presentation. The first minutes of your talk will help them decide, and you don’t want to see them sneaking out to go to another room. State your goals up front. Tell attendees what they will learn. You should also have an initial slide, a quotation, or a story that grabs their attention.
Some people naturally talk fast; others talk fast when nervous. You should speak just fast enough to cover all the content, and slow enough to be understood by all. Be sure to enunciate and speak clearly.
Um, well, if you have, like, a pre-teen and a teenager at home like I do, then you’re kinda familiar with, like, filler words, sounds, and whatever. Filler words make your communication less effective. You only have so many minutes to cover the content, so train yourself to avoid them. Instead of filler words, you can... pause.
At specific points in your presentation, be silent for one or more seconds. Make a pause
- right after you make an important remark to let people absorb it; or
- right before making an important point to emphasize it.
You can also combine the pause with the next tip.
Use inflection and vary the pitch of your voice to avoid a monotonic, boring speech. Throughout your presentation you should speak loudly enough to be heard by everybody in the room. You can lower your voice for emphasis: if you whisper a sentence, your audience will listen attentively, but you should do it sparingly.
- IN PERSON:
- Don’t turn sideways or turn your back to the audience. If you need to look at a slide, look at the laptop or monitor screen in front of you.
- You may need to turn to the projection screen to use a laser pointer, but do it sparingly. People who like the pointer sometimes unintentionally overuse it by pointing it at every sentence and figure on the slides
- Standing still behind the podium for your entire presentation is not ideal. Move closer to the audience, for example, to tell a story or answer a question. Move toward the screen to emphasize the importance of the information on the slide.
- Avoid pacing from side to side--some people do that when nervous, and it is distracting. Move purposefully.
- Mind your posture: stand balanced when you are not moving, without rocking back and forth, and keep your hands naturally at your sides or use them in meaningful ways in your communication.
- ONLINE:
- Keep your camera on and in front of you--participants should not see you from an angle.
- The camera should ideally be at eye level and not too close (within arm's length is a good distance, so people can see your gestures).
- Do relax but sit up straight. You can lean forward toward the camera to emphasize a message. If you have the proper camera and monitor set-up, another great option is to stand up for your presentation. By standing you gain a wider range of body language communication, and it also tells you're fully engaged in the presentation.
- Your background, be it virtual or real, should be static and reasonably clean, so it's not a distraction.
- IN PERSON:
- If you're presenting for the first time at a given venue, be there 30 minutes earlier to check that everything works, the Internet signal is good, monitor cable and projector configuration work with your laptop.
- If not using your own laptop, test that your presentation works fine with the computer to be used.
- Don't forget to test the reproduction of audio and video files, in case you'll use any.
- At conferences, sometimes we have zero minutes between the end of a presentation and the beginning of the next. In that case, organizers recommend that you visit the presentation room during a break or the day before for tests.
- ONLINE:
- Make sure your camera is well positioned.
- Use a lamp or light source behind the camera so people can see your face clearly.
- Use a headset or lapel mic instead of the laptop built-in microphone to get better sound quality. The built-in mic tends to capture more background noise (ex.: cooling fan) and noise from outside the room.
- Use at least two monitors, one for the screen you will share and the other to visualize the participants and chat window. The second monitor allows you to keep an eye on chat messages, although for an interactive session with up to ~100 participants, it's probably easier to ask them to open the mic when they want to ask a question.
- Become familiar with the meeting app to be used (zoom, Teams, google meet, etc.). In each of these apps, basic features and resources (waiting room, participant list, chat, screen sharing, breakout room, whiteboarding, recording) will work differently. As a presenter, it's your responsibility to know how to use the software even if there's a moderator to help you.
- If you will reproduce audio and video files, make sure that the meeting app is configured to play the computer sound and that you have enough upload bandwidth to stream the video.