Effective Technical Presentations

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Effective Technical Presentations

• David K. Farkas, ProfessorUniversity of
  WashingtonDepartment of Technical
  Communicationfarkas_at_u.washington.eduhttp//facul
  ty.washington.edu/farkas/UW Department of
  Electrical EngineeringJanuary 5, 2007

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Plan for this talk

• General guidelines for professional communication
• Oral presentations with PowerPoint
• How to coach each other
• Q/A

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General communication guidelines1

• Learn and follow the norms of your discipline
• Analyze the audience and their interest/needs
• Internalize your audience as you write and
  rehearse a presentation
• I dont get this. I need some examples
• Too much detail. Whats the big idea?
• Weak argument. I dont buy this.

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General communication guidelines2

• Get feedback from a trial audience

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The nature of oral presentations

• Presentations are real-time performances
• Presentations are real-time experiences for
  audiences. There are limits to what they can
  absorb.
• You must trust yourself to speak (use of notes
  must be limited)
• You must be flexible andwhen appropriateinteract
  ive. You must live in the moment.

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Creating your deck

• Write short, glossable bullet points
• In general, do not design for standalone use of
  the deck
• Dont be afraid of bare slides or runover slides
• Consider putting detail into the notes pane
• You dont need to gloss slide titles
• Use visualsbut not just PPT visuals
• Be cautious about eye candy (but follow norms of
  your discipline)

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Using the notes pane
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Rehearsing1

• Dont rehearse to memorize
• Uses the rehearsals to improve your deck
• Think about strategic pauses
• Use visualsbut not just PPT visuals
• Make plans for changing horses mid-stream
• You can break out of presentation mode and into
  discussion mode

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Rehearsing2

• Rehearse before an audience. Videotaping yourself
  is great.
• Beware presentations tend to run longer than
  rehearsals

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Presenting

• If possible, scout out the room in advance
• Generally, its good to distribute handouts of
  slides
• Bring very limited notes to podium (list of slide
  titles, printout of thumbnails)and dont depend
  on them
• Chat with folks in audience before you present
• When its time to present, just talk to the
  people

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Coaching each other1

• Give the presenter a few minutes to explain
  (contextualize) the presentation
• Try to have someone present who knows the genre
  and setting
• Audience can write down comments (content and
  presentation) and hand them inanonymously. Be
  tough!
• Prepare a checklist

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Coaching each other2

• May not be necessary for presenter to rehearse
  the whole presentationespecially if there is a
  handout of the deck

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The end
Questions?