Search Results for: audience needs

Number of Results: 97

Seven Deadly Sin of Presentations

No matter how amazing your research is, how life changing your story was, how impressive your business case is, if you commit any of the following deadly sins in the construction and delivery of your presentation it will not received…
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What are you talking about?

Seriously, what are you talking about? If you can’t explain in less than 3 sentences what your presentation is about, then you don’t know. Sadly, many presentations are just a list of facts in no particular order and not getting…
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How much data is too much data?

I recently had the privilige of presenting to the Dept. Paediatric Urology at Toronto Sick Kids Hospital. They were generally taken with the idea of a new method of presenting but one colleague was concerned that scientific presentations required the…
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How to “do” a presentation #htdap

How to do a presentation is an ordered list. Please follow the steps, in order. I think you’ll find the result both illuminating and rewarding. There are lots of links to other posts that deal with the issues in a…
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You’re an idiot.

No really! I have such concerns for your stupidity that I will annotate everything for you just so you know what everything is, or, if you aren’t paying attention it will become immediately apparent so you can catch up.There is…
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Are you talking to ME?

In the movie “Taxi Driver” Robert de Niro as Travis Bickle envisages a confrontation with a mugger and the classic line, “Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me? In his mind he has worked through how the…
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It’s too important

It might be a research funding panel, a conference plenary or your first research presentation but you want to get it right. It’s too important. So you add more: more slides, more bulletpoints, more references because it’s too important. This…
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Useless

dog watching his owner play guitar

Most presentation feedback is useless. “Thank you for your excellent presentation. I very much enjoyed it.” This really is not the critical review you hoped it would be. Feedback needs to be actively sought, shared in the spirit of improvement and as part of a conversation. Vague, polite platitudes unsolicitedly offered and based on what the listener felt are useless when it comes to development of presentation skills.

I know

In the Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, there is a dramatic and romantic moment where Princess Leia calls to Han Solo as he is about to be immersed in Carbonite. “I love you!” she calls. His response has become iconic. The slide below shows how most presentations would relate that scene as below. “I know”. Subtitles are not required. Like your powerpoint

Change

Ross standing in front of a slide of Bloom's taxonomy that describes learning

So now what should we do once we have recognised that there is glitch in The Matrix? Change. Having seen that we fall into the trap of using the slidewear to construct a powerpoint rather than a message, what should we do? Understanding the Presentation Paradox that we do what we hate in the construction and delivery of a presentation, what should we do? Seeing that science describes the problem, even if we see the problem all around us so now what should we do? Change.