I wanted to write down some thoughts and ideas, notes almost, after watching the IBM Connect 2014 technical presentations.

Ultimately what I want to understand and be able to execute myself is – What makes a good presenter/presentation?

Let’s ignore the content for the moment. Last week I attended sessions where I was interested in the content but the delivery was poor. I also went to presentations where the content didn’t interest me but the presentation kept my attention. Figuring out how to do a good presentation is very important to me. I would love to get feedback (comments below) on what other people think as I want to learn and I expect others do to.

This is a necessary life skill as a consultant /project lead – you need to be able to capture the attention of your audience even if they do not believe they are necessarily interested in what you have to say.

So what makes a bad presentation?

This is much easier to answer and the opposite is not necessarily true.

• Reading from the slides
  • Absolute #1 presenter sin in my book. It shows a lack of belief/knowledge in what you are talking about. It is very boring to watch you read from a slide when I can do it myself. It demonstrates very quickly there is no point in me being here as I can get the slides later.
• Too much code on the screen
  • see above
• Spending too long explaining abstract concepts in a technical manner
  • On the one hand if this is a technical session, I understand, but if lose your audience at any time during your 10 minute rant about how awesome your code is, they are lost and you have failed.
  • see above
• A bad abstract
  • Too often an unintentional bait and switch can really hurt a presenter. If your abstract claims that you are going to speak about jQuery then don’t spend 10 minutes bashing Dojo. Stick to the topic. Ensure that you talk to your abstract and don’t include large, previously declared, sections out of the blue; surprising attendees.
  • Many “non-Best Practices” sessions at Connect have abstracts that are vague and non-committal on the subject matter. What this then means is that attendees come to the session expecting one thing and don’t get it. Bad score – regardless of content if it is not why the attendee came you get a bad grade, people walk out, general feeling in the room is lower, bad scores.
• No demonstrations
  • What do we all enjoy most about the OGS – demos
  • What do we hate most about the OGS – no demos
  • It applies to all of us as well
• Don’t insult your audience
  • There is no point in going through something which has been discussed frequently on blogs – one slide – go read these links later, is all you need. We are here to learn about new things and be excited – don’t bore us with things we either know or can be looked up easily. (see know your audience and bad abstract)
  • Explaining to me how you make a REST Service work is not necessary when your talk is about something which consumes the REST service – tell me more about the something advertised and tell me where to go to find out more about REST services.

So what makes a good presentation?

• Structure
  • Everything you create must have a start, a middle and an end. Presentations are no exception.
  • Use slides to break up the flow based on the agenda. This was one of the best things about the template slide decks for this connect14 – purposeful section slides.
  • There is no reason why you cannot break the session up into many sections. But they must make sense, there must be a segue from one to the next and then must flow well. It also forces you the presenter to stay on the pre-planned path and not deviate too much
• Leave your audience wanting more
  • If everyone walks out going “huh well I guess that is it then” you fail. If they walk out taking notes from your slides because they want to look up the demos or downloads later – then you have won.
  • You do not have to beat a dead horse to get your point across (see less is more below)
• Practice
  • The only way you get better is practice, analyze, learn from your mistakes
  • Offer to speak at LUGs – they are almost all technical and with friends – you really can’t go wrong !
• Know your audience
  • Make sure your abstract makes clear what the audience should expect and what level the talk is aimed at. This will ensure a better reception and better transfer of knowledge.
  • For example: I know a thing or two about XPages but I don’t have the faintest clue about what OSGI plugins. If I attended a session about the Extension Library I would be lost in a heartbeat if the first 15 minutes were spent explaining how the ExtLib OSGI plugin concept worked. If OSGI plugins were not mentioned in the abstract I would be scoring low.
  • Equally don’t insult them all by pitching too low either.
• Vary your presentation method frequently
  • Don’t do the same thing slide after slide after slide.
    • Use visuals
    • Use metaphors
    • Use humor
    • Use demonstrations inter-dispersed with the rest of the content
• Talk to the audience don’t lecture them
  • A presentation which feels like a conversation is much easier to comprehend than one which feels like a lecture.
  • It is OK to gloss over something – don’t feel like you have to explain everything. You don’t have time so explain the absolute essentials and then stick to generalizations because you don’t have time otherwise (unless this is a show and tell session)
  • Remember – your audience cannot keep up with you and take copious notes in the session. This is not a lecture. This should excite the audience to the possibilities of learning something new and it is not unreasonable for them to go away and do some research themselves. Give the audience the knowledge and the tools (and even code to download) to help themselves. They cannot possibly leave the session being an expert so don’t try and make them one.
• Less is more
  • Attendees will be happier to finish a few minutes earlier than have to run to their next session. Don’t overfill the slide deck (see making them want more)

And I could go on and on. But please comment and tell me what you think is good and or bad as presentation skills – it is good for all of us to learn from each other 🙂