#good presentations

[medievalemma]

emma’s secrets for a Great Presentation

hey y’all, it seems i’m becoming somewhat known among friends for making Really Good Presentations. here’s some secrets for turning your presentation from drab to fab :) there’s a tl;dr at the bottom if you don’t have the time or energy to read everything, but i recommend you do if you can. (also, if something i say doesn’t work for you, don’t worry. a lot of these aren’t hard-and-fast rules.)

APPEARANCE AND TIPS:

use a theme!!!! make it pretty!!! plain white slides are BOOOOORING.

visual interest will keep audience attention. you don’t need a super complex one, the premade ones are generally pretty good. 

for maximum! effectiveness! go for something sleek/modern, with solid color blocks rather than patterns. 

if you don’t like the colors you can change them. look past the colors to the underlying design.

if you add a new slide in powerpoint, it'll copy the format/layout of the slide you're currently on.

don’t just use the same format for every slide! quotes should use a different slide layout to photos or blocks of text.

you can hide slides that don't work, don't delete them just in case! 

please don’t use slide transitions unless absolutely necessary they are a relic of the past and should be left there.

WRITING YOUR PRESENTATION SCRIPT:

 MAKE YOUR POWERPOINT WHILE WRITING THE PRESENTATION. i cannot stress this enough. it is so much easier to do them side-by-side, so you can make sure that your slides are relevant to your text.

you are writing out a script, right? don’t do it off the cuff. save yourself uhhs and umms by having all your words already prepared.

i know y’all sciencey types don’t do this, which imo is stupid. having a script also ensures that your facts are kept straight.

that said, write your script the same way you talk. you don’t talk like an academic journal in your day-to-day life so don’t write a presentation like one. 

keep it formal, but don’t be afraid of simple language and the occasional contraction or colloquialism.

remember, you’re writing something that will be spoken not read so you should be comfortable with the language.

a good guideline is to write as though you are telling grandma (or an interested stranger) about your presentation topic!

your concepts/arguments need to be clear and easy to understand for someone with only the barest context of your research. 

remember: your audience doesn’t have your notes and experience with the topic. even if they do, assume they don’t.

you can assume a basic level of discipline-standard knowledge (i.e. historians shouldn’t need you to define terms and concepts specific to history but if you’re not presenting to an audience made up entirely of people from your discipline, you may need to give a brief definition and context for important discipline-specific knowledge.

i.e. i wouldn’t expect a chemist to tell other chemists what a titration is but i would hope they would briefly define it for a general science audience and i would expect a definition for a general audience including non-scientists.

if you have to turn your script in, cite as you go, same as you would with an essay. 

if you don’t, do make sure to toss in a few informal citations so you know where you found bits you may need to find again. this can be as simple as an author’s surname or a short title and a page number.

don’t use in-text citations in your script -- use footnotes, which you can format as you would in-text citations. this is so you can smoothly read your script without having to skip over long-ass citations.

PICTURES ON SLIDES:

don’t just have text, please. put in pictures. audiences like pictures.

not clipart tho clipart is laaaame and so 2003

that said, how are your pics relevant? you gotta discuss them, don't just have a picture to have a picture. every photo has a purpose.

the bare necessary information for photos is licensing, year, and location. 

full citations of images can go in your sources list, which should be your last slide. (have that up during your concluding paragraph.)

when it comes to diagrams and graphs please ensure they are:

informative

accurate

relevant

use common sense: pie charts should only be used when you are showing parts of a whole. it is a mortal sin to do otherwise. do not use pie charts if the whole does not add up to 100%. if there is category overlap such that it cannot be displayed as a separate category then do not use a pie chart.

i will make an entire post about this if i need to

TEXT ON SLIDES:

don't have tons of text unless it’s necessary: i.e. you're doing a textual analysis, and then highlight the relevant bits with color and/or bold. 

i did an analysis using a list of criteria and i highlighted each criterion as i discussed it with color and bold, then changed the color to a darker one when i moved to the next but left it bold so the audience could see what we’d covered.

if you do have to have a ton of text use either multiple slides or the text animations (just have them appear or fly in, anything else is just...no.) so your audience doesn’t get info overload when you change slides.

when you’re using those animations, i personally prefer if the first bullet point is already on the slide. your header should not be the point of discussion -- it should tie all the points together.

when it comes to stuff you've quoted, put the full quote in its context in the slide. highlight the important stuff if it’s a long one. not necessary but it’s nice to see the full quote when you’re in the audience.

make sure the text is a size (and color) that is readable from a distance! 

whatever the default size on your presentation application is should be fine, usually that’s around 16-18pt.

16pt is generally the smallest you should go for text you expect your audience to read

citations can be smaller, i generally put those around 14pt or 12 if they’re massive.

your text should be readable if your presentation is viewed in greyscale. easiest way to determine this is to take a photo and put one of the greyscale filters in instagram on it. don’t publish it tho nobody wants to see that

ACTUALLY PRESENTING:

have some method of knowing where you want to switch slides, i like to highlight the text where i plan to go to the next slide. however you do it, have something that means NEXT SLIDE in your script.

just as you've put the slides to your text, put the text to your slides. you know that bit you highlighted? put that in the slide notes so you can easily see if the slide is where it should be.

read your presentation with your slides BEFORE you have to present it. this is how you can ensure they work together.

also, since you're reading your presentation (you did write it out didn’t you?), don't read from a script that’s at 12 pt whatever font. 

scale the font up so it is easily readable from a distance. 

if you're reading from a device, try to get it in a format where there are no overt page breaks and you can just continuously scroll. i find the “web format” of most word processors that have page-breaks is generally the best way. 

resize the window so it is no wider than a standard sheet of printer paper (A4/8.5x11″) -- this prevents you from having lines that are too long to comfortably read.

don’t worry about stumbling over your words. everyone does it. nobody really cares. it rarely distracts from your presentation. if you’re stumbling over the same part while practicing, fix it so you don’t. 

have a bottle of water to drink from when you’re done, bc your throat will be dry af. you’re welcome ;)

TL;DR: make it pretty, everything in the powerpoint should be relevant to your script, and of course, write a script that you can read from a distance!

[ngodingkode-blog-blog]

How to make good presentations

How to make good presentations

This presentation is all about making good presentations. It talks about the biggest mistakes, guides you through 5 different aspects of making presentations, and gives you some final

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[precarioustumblr]

How to Give a Great Presentation: Timeless Advice from a Legendary Adman, 1981

How to Organize a Presentation

Organizing a presentation is a combination of clear thinking (the pyramid principle, for example) and clear communications (points that follow here).

The setting is most likely a conference room. It’s a business environment. Everything you say, everything you show, every device you use, must move you toward your objectives in a businesslike fashion.

Keep things simple — keep them on target Start with specific, written objectives — and a strategy. You need a theme to give your presentation unity and direction, and to fix your purpose in your audience’s mind. Make it a simple theme, easy to remember, and open with it, using a headline to state it.

Tie every element in your presentation to the theme. If you’re using charts, put your theme all by itself on one chart and place it where it will be visible throughout the presentation. This keeps the people in your audience — sometimes sleepy, often distracted, always with lots on their minds — focused on your theme (and message).

Tell your audience where you’re going Show an agenda that lists the points you are going to cover. Describe the structure of your presentation, and say how long it will take. Estimate time conservatively — err on the long side rather than the short side. A presentation that is promised for twenty minutes and goes twenty-five seems like an eternity. The same thing promised for thirty minutes seems short in twenty-five, crisp and businesslike.

Throughout the meeting, refer to the agenda to keep your audience on track. Prepare a presentation book the audience can keep, and tell them at the start that you’ll give them copies after the meeting. This will relieve them from taking voluminous notes (instead of listening), so you’ll get their full attention. Do everything that’s been asked — and a little more. Be precise and complete in covering what was requested. If you cannot cover some point or other, say so and say why.

Think headlines, not labels Presenters often have impressive data on their charts, but fail to extract what the data shows, so the audience doesn’t understand what the numbers prove. What does your data say? Headings on charts should tell the audience how to think about the numbers. … Use headings to establish your main points. Guide the audience by numbering them on charts or slides, telling people how many you have.

Involve the audience Look for interesting visual devices to present dry, routine materials. A little creativity goes a long way. New computer programs make it easy to do colorful things with pie charts and bar charts. Newsmagazines hire top artists to make their charts interesting and clear. USA Today is particularly adept at charts, and runs at least one every day in the lower left-hand corner of the front page. Study the techniques of these publications — and borrow from them.

Think of ways to involve your audience. Play games with them. Invite people to guess the answers to questions, or to predict the results of research — before you reveal them.

Try to add something extra, something unexpected. It demonstrates more than routine interest. You might play tape recordings of customers describing your audience’s product, or quote a relevant passage from a speech your audience’s chief executive made years ago, or show an excerpt from yesterday’s TV news that illuminates or reinforces an important point.

Finish strong ‘Oh, give me something to remember you by’ goes the song. As soon as you’ve gone, your audience is likely to turn its attention to other things — perhaps to presentations competitive to yours. Leave something to remember you by.

Don’t let a meeting drift off into trivia. Close with a summary and a strong restatement of your proposition or recommendation. For major presentations, look for a memorable, dramatic close — something visual, perhaps a small gift that symbolizes your main point.

Keep your promise about how much time you’ll take. Running longer than you said you would at the outset shows a lack of discipline.

Presenters often sprout wings and fly when confronted with an audience. They expand, tell anecdotes — and hate to sit down. If what you’ve written is exactly on time in rehearsal, you’ll probably run over in performance. If you’ve been allotted twenty minutes, write for fifteen.

Via Maria Popova.