Using a background image to cover the entire slide
How should we otherwise communicate abstract and complex ideas that intrigues us, creates business, and changes the world. Most people are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the technical terms and the norms of the hacker community. It is our duty to convey intricate ideas, whether it be requirements, architectural decisions, or implementation details, in the clearest way possible.
Within the SEM programme presenting is common practice. Project work has to be presented for your classmates, supervisors and examiners. We are naturally nervous when those occasions are mandatory or the stakes are higher for whatever reason. There are many great authors and inspirational sources for making your presentations better on the Internet. Two of my personal favourites are Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen, and Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Design and author of Slide:ology. But I thought I share a few of my own experiences when presenting within the SEM programme, both as a classmate and occasionally as a supervisor.
First, lets look at how I remember us starting out presenting and errors that I still experience today when watching presentations.
Using fonts effectively can help your audience focus
- Too many ideas are cramped in to one slide – message becomes unclear
- Poor use of imagery and visuals – slides are distracting rather than enhancing the presentation experience
- Presenter talks to the screen and not to the audience – the slides becomes the presenter’s notes
The answer to resolving all of above is seemingly easy to envisage. Then, despite trying to lead by example is it so hard to change? And here’s the catch; preparing a presentation takes time. A lot of time. In preparation for the latest presentation that Emil and I held for our class we spent roughly 10 hours preparing the slides. Unfortunately, due to bad planning, we never had time to practice enough and the delivery was so-so. We survived on having presented together many times before.
As said earlier, in our field of study, we constantly have to communicate abstract and complex ideas. Visualising the how a three-tier layered architecture fulfils the stakeholders needs is not an easy task. Nevertheless, by inverting the points made above we get three good starting points.
- One idea – one slide. If the idea is too complex, spread it across several slides.
- Use images to explain and enhance. Flickr’s Creative Commons library has tonnes of useful imagery. The audience listens to your words, use the visuals to focus on the idea you’re communicating at that moment.
- Write your own notes and aim the slides to the audience.
Consider staging your ideas across several slides if content is too complex
Actually, that last point should be emphasized. Your words and your visuals should be chosen to suit your audience. Presenting for geeks allows you to use the vocabulary of geeks. Presenting for customers is a completely different thing. Think about your audience, and do it early, already when you start planning your presentation. Otherwise your audience will not understand what message you are trying to convey despite how interesting your content may be.
Now I hope this will inspire a few more students to drop the boring slides and start to present their already interesting content in a fashionable and compelling manner! As Jesper says: “copy-tweak,” start small, then move slowly and experiment. Once you’re out there [in the big world] it is a lot harder to test and the pressure and nervousness might be much higher. Finally, I’d also like to recommend a short introductory presentation that the Duarte team made for (and with) PowerPoint 2010. Watch it here.
Ps. The images in this post are taken from our latest presentation. A presentation about how organisations can improve “corporate communities” by adopting practices found in the free and open source communities.
Ever since I first heard of Twitter I’ve been wondering three things:
