Presentation
Technique
AIR NAVIGATION INSTITUTE
a free e-learning lecture by Beat Zimmermann
Lecture level
AB INITIO
Pre-requisites for this lecture:
A tiny bit of humour
The will to improve your presentation competencies
The Problem
We all will arrive at a point in life sooner or later when we are asked to present a
project, give a speech, lead a briefing, debrief a project or anything you can think of that
will require some kind of presentation from our part in front of an audience. The
problem is that most people are not trained to do this and therefore are not aware of the
common crimes commited out there in the presentation world.
Ask yourself a question
What is a good speech? What is a good presentation? In your memory please
take a journey back to a conference or a workshop you attended in the past. Do
you remember any of the speakers standing out? Or maybe you had a great
lecturer at University. One who stood out of the mass. What was different? What
did he do exactly? What did he NOT do? Why exactly did you think it was a
great presentation?
The Truth
Let me be honest with you. The sad truth is: About 90% of the presentations
given out there by experts about a certain field of their expertise are an
absolute nightmare. Most presenters commit so many crimes within an hour
that they should be heavily fined for it. What makes me sad is that a lot of
people seem to copy the bad stuff out there (instead of copying the good
stuff!...) and it never improves. Of course, doing the good stuff takes more
time. It takes more effort. But a speech, a presentation is SOMETHING
IMPORTANT and that‘s how the speaker has to treat it! Let‘s go through the
major crimes in presentation on the next few slides. Later we shall discuss
psychological phenomena like stage fright.
Presentation Crime Nr.1
Being funny when you aren‘t funny
I agree: A good laugh during a lecture or a presentation is great. If the
presenter is a funny person and he drops a spontaneous (!) joke every now
and then, this will greatly enhance his performance. But it is wrong to believe
that you can only make an impact when your presentation is full of jokes. Fact
is, if you are not a funny person, then don‘t try to be one. You are not Robert
de Niro who can change his character like his daily outfit. If a joke comes
across rehearsed it will miss the point. If you dropped the same joke at your
last speech a year ago, it is lame and if you copied your joke from a presenter
you just heard the day before during the conference, you dug yourself a deep
hole.
Presentation Crime Nr.2
Reading your speech from a paper
There is nothing to say against a piece of paper with keywords so you don‘t forget
anything that you wanted to say. But writing down your whole speech word by word and
reading it is a crime. Because your audience wants you to interact. They want you to give
them the feeling that you are COMMUNICATING with them. They want the feeling that
they inspire you and that if you gave your presentation an hour later to a different
audience, it wouldn‘t be exactly the same.
Why on earth would you want to write down your whole speech? Aren‘t you an expert in
that field? Isn‘t that the reason why you are speaking in the first place? If I go for coffee
with you and ask you questions about your field of expertise, will you pull out a page
with pre-written answers you can give me?
Presentation Crime Nr.3
Talking to your computer instead of the audience
Your computer or your paper notes are not interested in what you have to say. But your
audience is. So speak to them! That also includes: Look at them! Because if you and me
go for coffee again and you tell me about your field of expertise, I want you to look at me,
at least every now and then.
Presentation Crime Nr.4
Talking to the screen behind you
Stop looking at that screen behind you. You know what‘s there, therefore there is no need
to look at it. If you have to explain something on the screen, fine. Point at it but don‘t talk
to it. Talk to the audience. If you speak without a microphone the audience will probably
tell you, as your voice doesn‘t transfer anymore. If you speak with microphone they can
still hear you, but they will feel being ignored nevertheless. Again, you and me having
coffee, will you be talking to the painting at the wall behind you all the time?
Presentation Crime Nr.5
Laser Pointers
Let‘s face it: If god had thought that Laser Pointers are good for presentation, our index
finger would come with a laser beam. Not only it‘s hard to locate the red point when I sit
at the very back of the room, but the way you shake and stir with that pointer makes me
dizzy, okay?
I you need to explain things on the screen, use an extendable pointer like shown above.
There is only one exception to that: If you present in a huge auditorium and the screen is
too big for you to reach and point. But that‘s the only exception, okay?
Presentation Software
a.k.a: Death by PowerPoint
It is common nowadays to use presentation software to „enhance“ speeches. PowerPoint
is one of the software products that are used a lot. Actually it is not such a bad tool. The
only problem is that it allows the presenter to commit some of the worst presentation
crimes that are known to mankind. Without some basic knowledge about didactics,
processing of information in the brain of a student/listener, graphics and typography the
use of programs like PowerPoint is a lethal trap. On the next few slides we will look at the
presentation crimes specifically related to the use of presentation software.
Presentation Crime Nr.6
Using more than 2 fonts on a slide
This is to show all my
fonts
• For example this one here
• Or this one here is quite funky too
• How do you like that one?
• Ano!er one, nobody has
• One that musn't be missing
Dr. Siegfried Voegele from Germany did some extensive studies about the reading
behaviour of people. He invented an eye-camera allowing to log the eye movements of a
reader/listener and also to observe how much time the eye would spend reading a certain
item. One of the outcomes are, that more than two fonts on a page are forbidden. Look at
a newspaper: They use one font for headlines and one for copy (Copy ist the expression
for the text body). That‘s it. They might modify the style of a font in different contexts. For
example a font might be bold for the lead-in to the story. Or it might be italic when
describing a picture. No more - no less.
Presentation Crime Nr.7
An
im
a
Too many animations
tio Animation excess and other graphical crimes
ne
xc
sem
es
m
ess
i
irc la
r
c
l
cihp an
a
c
i
h
aragrgr rdehto dna ssecxraepnoitaminA
semirc lacihp
ehtoot
hdena other g
Animation excess
and
other
graphical
crimes
r
s
d
s
n
e
g
a ra cxe
s
s
noita
e
p
c
x
h
e
minA
ica
n
o
i
t
lc
a
m
i
rim
An
es
Presentation software allows you to use animations in any context. Text can be flying in
from all over the place, pictures can do the same, the slides can have animated transitions
and so on. Generally, the rule of thumb is: HANDS OFF!!! Your slides are not the show,
YOU ARE! Animations are effects that should enhance your presentation or emphasize a
point. If your presentation is full of animations, the audience gets distracted and bored.
Or do you wanna see pictures doing a back flip and seven spirals then wash through the
screen before you can actually see the picture?
Presentation Crime Nr.8
Bullet lists/Text
That's what I have to say
First, I gonna tell you this
Then that
Of course I am just reading the bullets
The next interesting point here
By now, you have fallen asleep
Now, let's see how I wake you up again
Probably not by announcing the next slide,
because that will be as boring as this one
Simply the worst thing you can do. If I want to read, I will buy a newspaper, okay? More
than 15 words on a slide are a criminal offense. I have counted 70 sometimes...
Presenters should be forced to donate 100 Euro to a charity for each bullet list they use. I
will give some further information about text in slides during the presentation later
(Cognitive Load Theory). For the moment let‘s just apprieciate the following fact:
The audience doesn‘t want to read, okay?! So forget your text and bullet lists and get
some pictures or graphics out that will assist what you have to SAY. It‘s a speech,
remember?
Why no bullet lists?
If you are trying to pack let's say 5 or 6 bullets on a slide you tend to pack
way too much information on that slide. Consider dedicating one slide to
each bullet and illustrate it with a picture. You will comply with 2 things
that way: You won't have more than 15 words on a slide and you won't
overload the listener's cognitive system with too much information. See
above how you can replace bullets effectively.
Presentation Crime Nr.9
Saying exactly what‘s written on the slide
We just learnt that more than 15 words on a slide are a no-go to start with. The Cognitive
Load Theory (Sweller, University of New South Wales) explains why it is a problem when
a speaker says the same words that are written on a slide that accompanies the speech.
The brain cannot process the same information from two different sources (same words
spoken and written). Therefore it will lead to an overload and the brain will be confused
and doesn‘t know which source to follow. As a result, your information vaporizes in no
man's land. You will lose your audience after about 3 slides.
Presentation Crime Nr.10
The „Questions“ slide at the end
For this one I just have 4 words to say: Give me a break! Who started this anyway? It‘s
okay to indicate the end of a presentation but can‘t you think of something a bit more
original than a slide saying „questions“?
Presentation Crime Nr.11
The Footer
The footer - at least SOME
useful info
Not only I bore you with my bullet lists
I also annoy you with too much text
Certainly I read from the screen
And of course I give you too little time to read it
all
Finally I put a footer on every slide, so you
remember where you are during the whole show.
And yes, the date is also extremely important.
The dreadful presentations seminar - Dull City 3.-5. May 2008 - page 7/1034
By having a footer, you give away precious space on the slide you might need for
graphics. Do you really think it is necessary for the audience to read „PBN Seminar,
Montreal June 12-15, 2007“ on every slide? Don‘t you think they know where they are?
Or is your presentation so boring that you want to help the audience figuring out where
they fell asleep when they eventually wake up?
Presentation Crime Nr.12
The Slide Background
Again, the slides are not the show. It‘s okay to have a background to your slides, just
watch some graphical rules. It must not be too „wild“ or „active“, as it will make the eyes
of the listeners tired. Furthermore, the color scheme used must be eye-friendly. Again the
background musn‘t distract from content. Don‘t change the colorscheme throughout the
presentation.
Presentation Crime Nr.13
Too many slides in a given time
If you count 1 slide per 3 minutes of speech, that is more than enough. Again, it is what
you have to say, rather than what you have to show that is the essential of the
presentation. If that wasn‘t the case, why are you standing there anyway? Your audience
hears and sees your presentation for the first time. They must process input from 2
different sources simultaneously, which is not that easy, so give them some time.
Audience Crime Nr.1
„Thanks for your excellent presentation“
Statements from the floor like „thanks for your excellent presentation“ or „good job,
Mark“ or anything along those lines are an insult to the speaker and unfortunately, in most
cases aren‘t true anyway. Only a few presentations out there are actually excellent and
believe me, the guys who deliver them know that they are good, they won‘t need your
comment about it. When you make a comment like this, it actually means: „Of course I
would have done it better, but for a presentation from you - hey, it was actually not too
bad!“ So if you have something to say, then say it. But please no remarks relating to the
presentation quality.
Audience Crime Nr.2
I am here therefore I must say something
Man, I am
important! Let me think of
something to say at the end of this.
Hmmm, no matter what, just to
make sure those guys here
know I am here.
Sometimes at the end of a presentation somebody from the floor will say "I don't have a
question but a remark to make" and then he gives the whole nine yards about why is so
important but what he says has nothing to do with the presentation give at all. My
comment: Don't. You are there to learn something eventually and not to express your
frustration that it wasn't you up there on the podium. You were in the audience and
nobody noticed? So what?
The Deal
Watch out, I am watching you!
If I know of somebody who downloaded this lecture and I witness his or her presentation,
you commit to paying 5 Euro per "crime" committed in to a fund that we will donate to a
charity at the end of each calender year. Deal? I knew you would agree...
made on Apple Keynote
Concept and realisation by Beat Zimmermann
© 2008 Air Navigation Institute
Please copy and distribute as much as you can!