{"id":1807,"date":"2010-02-23T10:23:21","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T00:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/?p=1807"},"modified":"2016-08-22T15:10:15","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T05:10:15","slug":"on-presenting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/23\/on-presenting\/","title":{"rendered":"on presenting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dilbert.com\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is totally not<\/strong> confined to at-work presentations.<\/p>\n

The number of sessions I have sat through that could have taken 5 minutes instead of 20,30,40 or even 60 is amazing<\/strong>. Remember: I have not flown half way around the globe to see you read. I have come to hear a story, to see how conclusions were formed and interact.<\/p>\n

Often, the tools are deficient. Powerpoint<\/a><\/strong> encourages bad habits<\/strong> (you can use PowerPoint for excellent slide decks too, but ignore the temptations of boring templates, bad effects and dot lists). The dot point<\/strong> list is more often than not your enemy<\/strong>. I (and anybody else in the audience who has learnt to read) can read your dot points faster than you can. While I’m reading, I’m not listening to you. <\/strong>If you spoke a cure for all forms of cancer just after having put a slide up filled with dot points… 90% of people will miss it.\u00ef\u00bb\u00bf<\/p>\n

Now, dot points are an excellent<\/strong> way to remind you what the heck you’re meant to be talking about (and in what order). Use presenter notes!<\/strong> They are really useful.<\/p>\n

If your laptop\/presentation software doesn’t support a “presenter” mode that lets you view presenter notes but not the whole room, simply write them down, print them out, or anything like that. One simple practice run through will make you be able to do this\u00c2\u00a0seamlessly.<\/p>\n

The last couple of presentations I did were completely assembled using 280slides.com<\/a>. An excellent web app for doing presentations. It will import and export ODF (and other formats) so you’re not tied to a (unfortunately) non open source web app. That being said, it ran fine in my browser and unlike OpenOffice.org<\/a>, did not make me want to stab people repeatedly every time I used it.<\/p>\n

So, Stewart’s quick tips:<\/p>\n