Transcript Presentations and demos - University of Manchester

Presentations and demos
INFO61003
Harold Somers
Overview
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General remarks
Structure and planning
Timing
Preparation
Delivery
Visual aids:
– Powerpoint
– Demo
• Taking questions
• Conclusions
General remarks
• What are they for?
– Listening is easier than reading
– People like to be stimulated and entertained
• What makes a good (bad) presentation?
– Imitate good ones, analyse bad ones and avoid their
mistakes
• First impressions count, so the start of the talk is
the most important
– Set the context with the first slide: “This talk is about
...”
– The magic trio: tell them what you’re going to tell
them, tell them it, then tell them what you’ve told them
Personal factors
• Try not to be nervous
– The audience is on your side: they want to hear a good
presentation
– Don’t be too worried if you make a mistake; just be
honest about it
• Involve the audience
– “Can you hear me?” (joke)
– Audience participation: ask questions
– Will you take interruptions? Tell them.
• Judge their understanding by looking at them
– But try not to look always at the same person!
Personal factors
• Delivery (see later)
• Should you tell jokes?
– Yes, but they should be spontaneous, and relevant
– If you are not naturally witty, don’t try to be
• How to lose your audience
– Misjudging their level of understanding
• Too high or too low
– Being over-confident or under-confident
– Giving a bad talk (!)
– Talking for too long, too fast
Overview
•
•
•
•
•
•
General remarks
Structure and planning
Timing
Preparation
Delivery
Visual aids:
– Powerpoint
– Demo
• Taking questions
• Conclusions
Structure and planning
• People’s attention span is quite short (10
minutes if they’re not fully engaged)
– Find ways to refresh it:
• Change of pace or tone
• Silly joke
• Attractive slide
• Best way to keep people’s attention is to
have a clear structure, and to remind them
of it (see previous slide)
Structure and planning
• Structure:
– 10% - 20% Introduction
– 60% - 80% Main body
– 10% - 20% Conclusion / summary
• Be overt about your structure, both on the
slides and verbally
Planning
• Top down development
– Identify your main headings
– Then subheadings
– Then fill in the details
• The three most important things are:
– Structure
– Structure
– Structure
Overview
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•
•
•
•
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General remarks
Structure and planning
Timing
Preparation
Delivery
Visual aids:
– Powerpoint
– Demo
• Taking questions
• Conclusions
Timing
• Surprisingly difficult to judge this right
• Most beginners over-run, though some
underestimate the time needed
• Obviously, have a full run through beforehand,
though remember:
– Adrenalin will make you talk faster
– The audience may slow you down
• So: plan your talk to last 80% of the allotted time
• It’s easier to fill in than to hurry
Timing
• What if you are over-running?
– Can you talk faster?
– Can you skip things? (bad)
• Whatever you do, don’t plough on regardless
• In any case, it’s a bad thing to happen
• Prevent it by
– Careful preparation
– Keeping an eye on your progress
– Don’t dawdle at the start
Overview
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•
•
•
•
•
General remarks
Structure and planning
Timing
Preparation
Delivery
Visual aids:
– Powerpoint
– Demo
• Taking questions
• Conclusions
Preparation
• Don’t underestimate how much time you
need to prepare and practice
• The shorter the talk, the more preparation
needed
– Why?
• Practice the talk with another person
and/or video it
Preparation
• Check out the venue beforehand
• Get your presentation installed on the host
computer, or have your laptop ready to just plug
in
– Make sure it works
– Have you used any unusual fonts or characters?
– Have you used a later version of PPT?
• Practice the changeover beforehand
• Be there on time (duh)
Overview
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General remarks
Structure and planning
Timing
Preparation
Delivery
Visual aids:
– Powerpoint
– Demo
• Taking questions
• Conclusions
Delivery
– Adrenalin will make you talk faster: SLOW
DOWN!
– Don’t just read out the slides: have something
to say about them
– Do you need to work on voice projection?
Arrange for there to be amplification if
necessary
Delivery
• Watch your body language
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What are you doing with your hands?
Keep relatively still ...
... though some animation is natural
Find out if you overdo it
• Don’t block the screen
– You may have to move around if the screen is badly placed
– Can everyone see?
– Not your fault, but apologize to the audience anyway
• Don’t turn your back
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Face the audience, not the screen
Point at the big screen not at your monitor
Use the cursor, or a big stick
Laser pointers?
Notes and text
• Never read aloud from notes or text
– Notes are OK, but use them as a guide (I use my
slides as my notes)
– If you must have notes, use individual numbered
cards
– They should be NOTES, not the full text of what you
want to say
– Listening to someone reading is boring
– You can’t look at your audience if you are reading
– And anyway, speech and text should be different
– My advice: don’t write out your speech in full in the
first place
Overview
•
•
•
•
•
•
General remarks
Structure and planning
Timing
Preparation
Delivery
Visual aids:
– Powerpoint
– Demo
• Taking questions
• Conclusions
Slides
• One per minute for a short talk, one per 3
minutes for a long talk
– Though some slides don’t count
• The information on the slide should
complement what you’re saying, not
compete with it
• I won’t say anything about this third bullet
point: will you have time to read it and also
listen to what I’m saying?
Slides
• Don’t overcrowd the slide
– Two or three levels of bullet point
– Headings, not full text
• If you put too much text on the slide you will be
tempted to just read it out: the audience can just as
easily read the text themselves, so what’s the
point?
• Also too much text on the slide means that the
writing will be too small
Slides
• This slide is too bare
This slide is too dense
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A talk with slides is the usual way of presenting scientific results and business plans,
so it is important to be familiar with this type of presentation in particular.
You need first to decide how many slides you will show. For a short talk I find that one
a minute is about right. For a ten minute presentation, I will normally produce ten
slides with the most important information on, and another two or three with
supporting material. I normally try to anticipate the sorts of questions that people will
ask, and prepare supporting slides to illustrate my answers to these questions.
Usually I find I don't need all these extra slides, but it doesn't take long to make them.
For a one-hour presentation you can take things a bit more slowly; in this case one
slide every two or three minutes is probably about right. Of course you should not
follow these guidlines dogmatically; if you find you need to show more slides then
that's what you should do. If a slide contains complex experimental or statistical
results then it will take longer to explain. In this case you may find you can only show
a few slides in a ten minute presentation.
The trusty old overhead projector is the normal method of showing slides in the
academic environment. A common mistake is for the speaker to stand in front of it
and obscure the audience's view. Sometimes the projector and screen are deployed
so badly that it is impossible to avoid blocking someone's view. If you cannot do
anything about this, you should at least apologise for it.
Colour schemes
• There’s a lot of research on colour
combinations
• Generally simple schemes work best:
– Dark letters on light background
– The opposite may look more exciting, but
inverted slides are hard to read if the room is
not very dark
Colour schemes
• There’s a lot of research on colour
combinations
• Generally simple schemes work best:
– Dark letters on light background
– The opposite may look more exciting, but
inverted slides are hard to read if the room is
not very dark
– Dark letters on dark background is a disaster
Colour schemes
• There’s a lot of research on colour
combinations
• Generally simple schemes work best:
– Dark letters on light background
– The opposite may look more exciting, but
inverted slides are hard to read if the room is
not very dark
– Dark letters on dark background is a disaster
Colour schemes
• There’s a lot of research on colour
combinations
• Generally simple schemes work best:
– Dark letters on light background
– The opposite may look more exciting, but
inverted slides are hard to read if the room is
not very dark
– Dark letters on dark background is a disaster
Colours and fonts
• Don’t use too many colours
– It looks messy
– It distracts form what you want to say
• Same is true of fonts
– Simpler fonts are easier to read
– Simpler fonts are easier to read
– Simpler fonts are easier to read
– Simpler fonts are easier to read
– Some fonts are OK for
headers but not running
text
Templates
• Think twice about having fancy
backgrounds
• Is it appropriate? Does it add to or detract
from your presentation?
• Familiarity breeds contempt
– Everyone has MS Powerpoint
Animations and effects
• Again, simpler is better
• Scrolling or wiping is OK
• Think hard whether you really need it
Other effects are distracting
Especially whizzing and twirling
Whizzing and twirling is distracting
Whizzing and twirling is distracting
Doing a demo
• These need very careful planning
• What do you hope your demo will show?
• Make sure you explain to the audience
– Before the demo, what they are GOING to
see
– What is happening at each point
• Integrate your demo into your presentation
– Better if you can launch it from within
Powerpoint
Doing a demo
• If you need to launch it, do so before the
start of the talk, so it is running in the
background:
– No one wants to watch you loading your
program
• Make sure it works on the platform you are
given: try it out beforehand
Doing a demo
• Murphy’s law: If something can go wrong,
it will
• DO a demo if required, but avoid it if you
can
• Back-up: have some screen shots that you
can show and talk through if it goes wrong
• If it is going wrong, just stop: don’t try to fix
it
Questions
• Leave time to take questions
• Questioners usually have one of three
purposes
– To get you to explain something they didn’t
understand
– To show off
– To put you down
Questions
• To get you to explain something they didn’t
understand
– Maybe they are stupid
– Maybe you didn’t explain it well
• If you think you already explained it, go
back to the relevant slide and try again
– But don’t be impatient or patronising
Questions
• If they ask you a question that you can’t
answer
– Because they are showing off or trying to put
you down
– Or because it’s a genuinely difficult question
• Be honest and say you don’t know
• Thank them for the question
• Offer to discuss it with them afterwards
Conclusions
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Keep it simple
Practice plenty
Be prepared
Try to be confident
– Everyone knows what it’s like to be nervous
• Assume the audience is on your side
Overview
•
•
•
•
•
•
General remarks
Structure and planning
Timing
Preparation
Delivery
Visual aids:
– Powerpoint
– Demo
• Taking questions
• Conclusions