Presentation Dos and Don'ts
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Send to a friend by YMAuthor: Eric Feng
I just came back from a hosting assignment at Startup@Singapore Enterprise Launcher 2006. On the whole, I thought the event was a success. There was a good mix of entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors and government agency representatives. Most of the talks were also informative. Unfortunately, I only found one of the talks (out of sixteen) to be entertaining… so you can imagine how challenging it was for me to stay awake throughout (especially with the heavy lunch and tea breaks in between)
I just came back from a hosting assignment at Startup@Singapore Enterprise Launcher 2006. On the whole, I thought the event was a success. There was a good mix of entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors and government agency representatives. Most of the talks were also informative. Unfortunately, I only found one of the talks (out of sixteen) to be entertaining… so you can imagine how challenging it was for me to stay awake throughout (esp. with the heavy lunch and tea breaks in between)
Took note of some presentation dos and don’ts and thought you would be interested to know. Seriously, avoiding some of the don’ts and implementing some dos can really make your presentation stand out from the rest. Don’t you want that?
Things to avoid:
1. Doing a video presentation with powerpoint slides
I was a little shocked when I realized that the video presentation was simply an autorun of slides with some classical music as background. And worse, the slides had so many words that it was impossible to read everything within 5 seconds/slide timeframe. In fact in one of the slides, there were at least 100 words with no pictures!
Though the music was tastefully chosen, it was too short; it was around 5-8 seconds long. As such, throughout the 1 minute presentation, the music was repeated at least 8-10 times. Not exactly pleasing to the ears after you hear it the third time. If you insist of using powerpoint slides to do the video presentation, use pictures and very little words. Probably just caption titles. You may even want to include short video clips. And please, select your music wisely. Preferably one that is long enough to last through the entire presentation.
2. Jumping straight into your speech
Remember to introduce yourself and set the intent of your talk, before you jump right in. Else the audience will be very confused. Having just a title of your speech on the program sheet will not suffice.
3. Walking around the stage with no purpose
I find it both funny and nauseating to have the speaker walking to and fro the stage, with no purpose except to ease off their nervousness. After a while, you stop following the speaker. And then you stop listening to the speaker altogether. What I recommend is to find a spot on the stage (preferably center) and firm yourself down. Use your body to underscore some of your points. Make eye contact. If you really have to move, do so when you make a new point. This technique is also call “anchoring” which is widely used in theatrics.
4. Use bombastic or technical words to address the audience
Never assume that your audience knows all the technical words you use. Not to mention acroymns. If you have to use them, remember to explain what they mean. Else we will spend the next 10 mins figuring out. And by the time we give up, we will be lost in your speech. Here’s some that were used today:
REIT GLC TLC IDM Distributed database environment Mezzaine Funding
5. 80 slides in 45 mins??!!
You get the point. And as you guessed correctly, the speaker did not manage to finish covering all his slides. My guess is that he did not rehearse. But you may say that they are busy people. They won’t have time. So here’s some guide. If you are planning to give a 45 mins speech, have the most 20 slides. That will allow you to talk for 2 mins per slide. And you will have some buffer time to handle questions. Remember, the audience ALWAYS prefer a succint presentation than a long one. You could imagine how relieved the audience was when one of the speakers had only ONE slide! We love him to the core.
6. Too many tables, figures and graphs may not be a good thing
Yes, we did mention before that having tables and graphs make the presentation more digestable. But if you have more than 15 slides that contains tables after tables, graphs after graphs, figures after figures, it becomes an overkill. Remember, everything in moderation. Have a mix. Include some words (read caption words, keywords or quotes), some images (preferably to be funny), some cartoons, some video clips (short ones!) and some graphs. In that case, we won’t be bored. You may like eating chicken wings. But you won’t want to eat them everyday for the rest of the year, will you? Same principle applies here.
Ok. Enough “bitching”. There are of course some good points that we should all learn from.
Learning Points
1. Use as little slides as possible. Less is more in this case!
Enough said!
2. If a picture can replace the words, do so!
I thought the last speaker Mr K V Rao was very entertaining albeit the challenge he faced being the last speaker. Though he had over 20 slides, they were visual, with very few words. To top it up, the images were extremely humorous. There were a couple that I liked a lot. One was the over-crowed train in India and the other was a shocked monkey at his last slide. He also underscored a point that getting a business idea to the market is not a straightforward thing (which he represented with a line). Instead it was one that is extremely challenging.
3. Be sensitive to the audience
I applaud the second last speaker for his flexibility and sensitivity to the audience. He was supposed to speak right after the first speaker. However he was aware that the audience was weary. Instead of continuing, he gave them a short 5 mins break to get their coffee. Though it was a simple gesture, it made a difference. The audience came back rejuvenated and was able to concentrate throughout his presentation.
4. Use quotes
Throughout the entire 16 speeches I sat through, only two speakers included quotes in their presentation, which I thought was a breath of fresh air. If there is a quote that you can leverage on in your presentation, do so! I shall leave you with my fave quote of the day. “Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli
Eric Feng's Last Articles :
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