11 Top Tips for a Successful Technical Presentation
Over five years ago I posted Tips for a Successful MSFT Presentation. Yesterday I watched the video of my Mix Presentation all the way through. It's always very painful to hear one's own voice but it's even worse to watch yourself. I never listen to my podcast and I avoid watching myself. It's like watching a person in parallel universe and it inspires self-loathing. However, if you are someone who values continuous improvement - and I am - you need to do the uncomfortable.
Here's my five-years-later Updated Tips for a Successful Technical Presentation.
1. Have a Reset Strategy (One-Click)
If you're going to give a talk, you'll probably have to give it more than once. If you have demonstrations of any kind, have a "one-click" way to reset them. This might be a batch file or Powershell script that drops a modified database and reattaches a fresh one, or copies template files over ones you modify during your demo.
Personally, I'm sold on Virtual Machines. I have seven VMs on a small, fast portable USB drive that will let me do roughly 12 different presentations at the drop of a hat. You never know when you'll be called upon to give a demo. With a Virtual Machine I can turn on "Undo Disks" after I've prepared the talk, and my reset strategy is to just turn off the VM and select "Delete Changes." A little up-front preparation means one less thing for you to panic about the day of the talk.
2. Know Your Affectations (Ssssssseriously)
I have a bit of a lisp, it seems. I also hold my shoulders a little higher than is natural which causes my neck to tighten up. I also pick a different word, without realizing it, and overuse it in every talk. This is similar to how Microsoft Employees overuse the word "so" (which is actually Northwestern Americans, not MSFTies) too much.
It's important to know YOUR affectations so you can change them. They may be weakening your talk. Don't try to remember them all, though. Just pick two or three and focus on replacing them with something less detracting. Don't overanalyze or beat yourself up, though. I've spoken hundreds of times over the last 15 years and I'm always taking two-steps forward and one step back. The point is to try, not to succeed absolutely.
3. Know When To Move and When To Not Move (Red light!)
One of the most powerful tips I ever received was this: "When you move, they look at you. When you stop, they look at the screen." Use this to your advantage. Don't pace randomly, idley or unconsciously. Don't rock back and forth on your heels. Also, empty your pockets if you tend to fiddle with lose change or your keys.
4. For the Love of All That Is Holy, FONT SIZE, People (See that?)
It just tears me up. It physically makes me ill. To give a presentation and utter the words "um, you probably won't be able to see this" does everyone in the room a disservice. Do NOT use the moment of the presentation as your time to do the font resizing.
Lucida Console, 14 to 18pt, Bold. Consider this my gift to you. This is the most readable, mono-spaced font out there. Courier of any flavor or Arial (or any other proportionally spaced font) is NOT appropriate for code demonstrations, period, full stop. Prepare your machine AHEAD OF TIME. Nothing disrespects an audience like making them wait while you ask "Can you see this 8 point font? No? Oh, let me change it while you wait." Setup every program you could possibly use, including all Command Prompt shortcuts, before you begin your presentation. That includes VS.NET, Notepad, XMLSpy, and any others, including any small utilities.
I've found that the most readable setup for Command Prompts is a Black Background and with the Foreground Text set to Kermit Green (ala "Green Screen." Yes, I was suspicious and disbelieving also, but believe it or not, it really works.) I set Command Prompts to Lucida Console, 14 to 18pt, Bold as well, with much success.
Also, set the font size to LARGEST in Internet Explorer and remember that there are accessibility features in IE that allow you to include your own Large Font CSS file for those web pages that force a small font via CSS.
Learn how to use ZoomIt and practice before-hand. It can be an incredibly powerful tool for calling out sections of the screen and making it so even the folks way in the back can see what's going on.
For simplicities' sake, I like to keep a separate user around call "BigFonty" (choose your own name). He's an Administrator on the local machine and he exists ONLY for the purposes of demonstrations. All the fonts are large for all programs, large icons, great colors, etc. It's the easiest way to set all these settings once and always have them easily available.
5. Speak their Language (Know the Audience)
When I was in Malaysia for TechEd, I spent 3 full days exclusively with locals before the talk, I learned snippets of each of the languages, tried to understand their jokes and get an idea about what was important to people in Malaysia. American analogies, much humor, and certain "U.S. specific" English colloquialisms just didn't make any sense to them. When it came time to give the presentations, I better understood the Malaysian sense of timing, of tone and timbre, and I began each of my presentations by speaking in Bahasa Malaysia. I changed aspects of my slides to remove inappropriate content and add specific details that would be important to them.
I've used this same technique in a half-dozen countries with success. While this is an extreme example, the parallels with any audience are clear. If you're speaking to a room full of IT guys who work in the Automotive field, or the Banking industry, the fact that we are all programmers only gives you a small degree of shared experience. Remember no matter the technical topic, try to get into the mind of the audience and ask yourself, why are they here and what can I tell them that will not be a waste of their time. What would YOU want to hear (and HOW would you like to hear it) if you were sitting there?
6. Be Utterly Prepared (No excuses)
Short of an unexpected BSOD (and even then, be ready) you should be prepared for ANYTHING. You should know EVERY inch of your demos and EXACTLY what can go wrong. Nothing kills your credibility more than an error that you DON'T understand. Errors and screw-ups happen ALL the time in Presentations. They can even INCREASE your credibility if you recover gracefully and EXPLAIN what happened. "Ah, this is a common mistake that I've made, and here's what you should watch for." Be prepared with phrases that will turn the unfortunate incident around and provide them useful information.
7. CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT (Have some)
Every move, phrase, mistake, anecdote and slide should actually contain content. It should be meaningful. Your mistakes should teach them, your demos should teach them; even your shortcut keys, utilities and menu layout should teach them. A presentation isn't an opportunity to read your slides. I'll say that again. Don't READ your slides. I can read faster than you can talk.
Remember that most people can read silently to themselves 5 to 10 times faster that you can read to them out loud. Your job as a presenter is to read in between the lines, and provide them structure. Your slides should be treated as your outline – they are structure, scaffolding, nothing more. If you jam your slides full of details and dozens of bullets, you might as well take your content and write an article. It's difficult to listen to someone talk and read their slides at the same time – remember that when you design your content. YOU are the content, and your slides are your Table of Contents.
8. System Setup (Be unique, but don't be nuts)
When you a presenting, remember that you are looked upon as an authority. Basically, you are innocent until proven guilty. It's great to have a personality and to be unique, but don't let your personal choice of editors or crazy color scheme obscure the good information you're presenting. I appreciate that you may like to use VI or emacs to view text files, but let's just say that sometimes Notepad has a calming effect on the audience.
I give Microsoft talks, usually, so I tend towards Visual Studio, but 99% of my talks use a limited number of tools. Basically Visual Studio, Notepad, the Command Prompt and a Browser.
Remember that while you may prefer things a certain way while your face is a foot away from the screen, it's very likely the wrong setup when 500 people are more than 100 feet away.
I really like to get Toolbars and things out of the way. I use F11 (Fullscreen) in the Browser a lot, as well as Visual Studio's Shift-Alt-Enter shortcut to FullScreen. Turn off unneeded flair and toolbars. Also, turn on line-numbering so you can refer to lines if you're presenting code.
9. Speaking (Um…)
"Volume and Diction," my High School Drama teacher said to me. Speak clearly, authoritatively, project your voice to the back of the room. The best speakers don't even need microphones. If you have a speaking affectation (I had a lisp growing up) or you tend to say, um, etc, or find yourself overusing a specific phrase ("a priori", "fantastic", "powerful", etc) take it upon yourself to NOTICE this mannerism and avoid it.
Practice multi-tasking. It seems silly to say, but although we can all multitask to a certain degree, when we hit a real snag in a presentation, many of us tend to freeze. Silence is deadly. Remember, since all eyes are on you, complete silence and apparent introspection says "I don't know know what I'm doing." When you need to get to a particular file, don't make the audience wait for you while you putter through explorer. Have shortcuts ready (and explain when you use them). Move fast and efficiently, but annotate your actions. You should continue to "color-commentate" your actions like a sports announcer. Don't allow "dead-air," unless it's silence for effect.
10. Advancing Slides (No lasers!)
I always used to hate slide-advancers, you know, those little remotes with forward and backward buttons. Then I tried one and I'm hooked. I use the Microsoft Presenter Mouse 8000 and totally recommend it. It isn't just a great Bluetooth mouse, but flip it over and it's a great Powerpoint slide advancer.
Take a look at Al Gore's excellent presentation in "An Inconvenient Truth." It's seamless and flows. Now imagine him running over to his laptop to hit the spacebar each time he wanted to advance a slide. My presentations have gotten better as I've started incorporating this technique.
11. Care (deeply)
I really avoid presenting on topics that I don't care about. I avoid it like the Plague and I encourage you to do so as well. There's nothing more important that truly caring about your topic. If you care, it'll show. If you eschew all the other tips, at the very least care.
What are YOUR tips, Dear Reader? What tips, mantras or preparations have you used to make your presentations that much better?
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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I read a book that change my presentations, it's the "beyond bullet points by Cliff Atkinson". When I did a presentation in the style Cliff write in the book, I got several good feeback like, Interesting presention style I like it etc.
They both insist on using a less textual and more visual approach that respects how your audience learn.
The best advice I can offer on creating effective presentations: tell people STORIES they can identify with.
Take MVC. You may start showing a concrete problem you faced with webforms, say testability (or lack of separation of concerns, or its leaky abstractions, etc) in one of your applications. Tell them the frustration you felt and why you cared. Then your dilemma. You heard about MVC and you are unsure if it will alleviate your pain or just bring tons of other problems. Should I go MVC, should I not? Go deep, explain some fundamental bits of it. Then a turning point. You are still learning and evaluating when something brutal happens: your current application fails and lack of unit testing on the UI is something you can't live with anymore. Your team decides unanimously: it's MVC! What problems did you face? What were the first obstacles? Did you succeed or failed? How about consequences and lessons learned? I believe, you can explain technology through personal discovery and action. Now, THAT could be the basis for a truly memorable presentation, wouldn't you agree?
Thanks!
What I also always do:
-prep my second laptop, and have it in my car
-upload slides and demo's to webmail or something like that
-always use the presenter (I have the Logitech Presenter and have the Microsoft Presenter Mouse that I only use as mouse. The latter one has issues with signals, the Logitech is more precise)
A while back I wrote about 8 Simple Tips To Improve Your Presentation Skills. I hope it will be a good complement to your own tips.
Thanks!
That's why when you and I give a talk together, it's a true learning experience because we embody both of these teaching patterns. You cover the the former and I cover the latter. :)
It's quite liberating to not be stuck at my computer, and be able to stand by the screen. I recall one venue where the screen was on one side of the stage, but the podium was clear on the other, a good 30 feet away. That little mouse is a lifesaver.
Sucks batteries though, so as a Twitter friend (PlatinumBay) just reminded me always be sure to carry spare batteries for your mouse. I use rechargeable enegizers, carry several sets, so I before every presentation I just slip in a fresh set so I know I won't have any problems.
I highly encourage anyone who does presentations to invest in some sort of device, whether it be the MS 8000 Scott mentioned, the AMP01US, or even a low end 30 dollar device that just advances slides. Anything that will let you step away from the podium will help you connect to the audience, and you will definitely be happier too.
Speaking of things going wrong [true story]: Don't forget your laptop adapter at home and realize you have 40% battery on the machine, power paranoia interferes with the presentation!
I learned public speaking in the Canadian Military and there is a surprising amount of overlap with their training and your advice. They called affectations and ums word whispers: the little things people say while they're retrieving the next thought. I say "Ok?" a lot. By far the worst are um and uh.
The thing is, as soon as you're aware of word whispers, you can't not hear them, when you speak and especially when others speak.
That's why it's best to practice what you're saying. Write it out and practice, practice, practice. When you've practiced the presentation, the content is there in your brain and it'll come out quite easily with a minimum of word whispers. Then don't bring notes to the talk, they'll distract you from speaking naturally to the audience. The only time I'd allow someone to not write it out is if it's something they've been doing to for at least a few months every day.
Another basic tip that is so hard to do is to look at the laptop and trust that what's on the laptop is on the screen. Nothing distracts me more than a presenter who is looking at the screen more than the audience.
This kind of fits into some of the categories above but I think it deserves a bullet point of its own. Even altering your voice level to an extreme like throwing a raised voice hollar out to the crowd, even utilizing a mumble can even make people pay attention sometimes (in rare occasions).
The raised voice works very well when there are several one after another points that are brought up in rapid fire. This can easily happen speaking on technical topics.
I've actually noticed mumbling can be a good comic recourse when there are some necessary steps that are tedious in a presentation. Like I said above though, this is something that must be done with extreme care as to not distract, the point being to add levity to a topic.
Both of these are things that Balmer, Jobs, and other have done numerous times to present the technical topics of computers in an exiting light, for the not so technical populace. Generally I've seen it work well with techy topics for the techie hard core too. :)
Just my 2 cents.
Good post and I hope you passed the audition.
Another thing is to watch the audience. I've seen a lot of presenters who don't seem to be aware that their audience is falling asleep or breaking eye contact during a particularly boring part of the proesentation - it should be a cue to either move on or change up how you're presenting.
I still have a lot of trouble with unexpected glitches in my presentation though. Every time I Alt+Tab to Eclipse and it decides to go out to lunch I just get totally confounded.
Very good post. I have seen you present before a few times and I noticed you are "trying" to be a good presenter. :)
Another point is: do not depend on availability of the web. Make local copies of the web pages you are going to show. If the web is not available during the presentation, switch to local copies. Or just use them from the start. They load faster and have the assurance of availability.
I've been doing presentations and trainings to our foreign customers, but I am absolutely NOT a professional public speaker. I'm more a "oh well, I'll invent something tomorrow before the presentation starts" type.
But the two things that I would add to your list are (depending on the audience, of course):
1. Make them smile. Without exaggerating, sometimes a little joke about yourself, or your product, or the world in general, is good to keep the audience in a good mood to listen to you, IF you have a good sense of humor. Besides, it's a good way to see who's asleep...
2. Accept your faults (and the ones of your team, too). You, oh mighty XYZ evangelist speaker, are NOT a programmer god, your program has bugs, and is still missing some key features that your audience was expecting. Delivering a 100% good product is impossible, you know it, they know it, so don't try to BS them... Over the years, I've found out that talking freely with your end-users during presentations about the problems of your product is always good for your relationships in the long term. Of course, this is only valid if you've actually ALREADY SOLD them your product ;-)
BTW, my overused word during presentations is "basically".
"YOU are the content, and your slides are your Table of Contents". Love that one.
While monospaced fonts do have their place whenever text has to be linied up on character boundaries across multiple lines, they have a major disadvantage for .NET code with its typical long identifier names: they tend to use much horizontal space. This may not be a problem on a widescreen TFT, but on a typical 1024x768 presentation beamer, using a monospaced font in readable size, will force the presenter to scroll the editor window horizontally sooner or later (at least when showing "real world code" using proper identifier names).
A bit of scrolling is not a problem, but I have watched many presentations where I almost got motion sickness. It makes me mad knowing that in most cases switching to a proportional font would have reduced the amount of scrolling significantly, without reducing readability.
I do agree that Arial is bad for source code (problem: lowercase L vs. uppercase i), but Tahoma or Verdana are definitely ok (they have serifs for the uppercase i)
http://agilology.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-to-give-presentation-to-people-who.html
"Spontaneous speech is filled with disfluencies—unwanted pauses, elongated segments, fillers (such as uh and um), editing expressions (such as I mean and you know), word fragments, self-corrections, and repeated words. Most disfluencies seem to reflect planning problems. When speakers cannot formulate an entire utterance at once, they may suspend their speech and introduce a pause or filler before going on. And when speakers change their minds about what they are saying, they may suspend their speech and then add to, delete, or replace words they have already produced." -- Repeating words in spontaneous speech. Herbert H. Clark and Thomas Wasow, COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 37, 201–242 (1998)
Great tips, especially about the "One-Click-Reset."
I often conduct training courses, where we have multiple instructors to keep the class lively, and the students intrested. The problem we run into is the other instructors are standing in the back of the room, if the speaker, mis-speakes, or mis-understands a question, there is a tendence for a senior instructor at the back of the room to interupt and correct the statement. We've found that this reduces the credibility of the speaker, and ultimately lowers the confidence of the students. Its much better to wait until the next transistion, and have the instructor who is going on to give a carefully worded "re-statement of the issue." This way the first instructor is able to finish their module without the interuptions, and the new speaker actually has more credibility from the start.
An affectation is the act of behaving or talking in a way that is not natural or genuine. I wouldn't describe a lisp in that way (unless your Mel Blanc), and I certainly don't know how you would change it. I had a pronounced lisp as a child, but was fortunate enough to get speech therapy while in grade school. Even so, like you, I still have a slight lisp. So, like, um, how do you deal with it?
Don't write to much code. Either put it in snippets (in VS), or just have a copy of code snippets in textpad or such.
Have a separate project of your demo that you know compiles. When all else fails you can pull up your working copy.
Don't be afraid to tell the audience you don't know. I happily admit that I would need to ask google if I'm not sure what the answer to a question is.
Black box parts of code that don't matter. Some presenters feel like they need to explain what every line of code does. Focus on the parts of code that matter to the subject matter your teaching. For example I give a talk on writing cmdlets for powershell. The cmdlets I present are very simple, because the point of the presentation is to teach about cmdlets, not the cool thing the cmdlet is actually doing.
As soon as possible write down notes to yourself on how you could do better. Revise your slide deck every time you present (or almost every time at least).
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Make_a_Presentation_Like_Al_Gore
Best regards,
KiKi
klital@osa.org
Best regards,
KiKi
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This also upfront answers the all so common "will your slides and code be available" question.
As for your one click reset - this has also saved me a few times when my personal machine stopped working (or once was incompatible with the projector). Just download the code on a guest machine, spend 2 or 3 minutes getting setup, and - I was back in business.