Walking Paper

Great points Aaron.

I would also say be yourself – find your own voice/style. There are lots of styles that people enjoy. One of the fun things about conferences is the diversity in the speakers. Find where you’re comfortable and your audience is comfortable.

Pick things to talk about that you feel passionately about and are interested in – then you’ll have something to say and be able to talk about it with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is contagious.

A great place to start out talking is at something like a barcamp – our local Saskatoon barcamp really encourages and wants to hear from first time speakers.

Cheers
Darlene

I agree with the bulk of the entry, but with one caveat — from the perspective of a meeting organizer. Slides that are predominantly made up of graphics offer little value to subsequent viewers of those slides. I think it is important to consider subsequent learners who view slides (without having been able to attend the real event)who may not be able to grasp a valuable point because there isn’t enough content visible on the slide.

“Quoting other people looks you make smart.”

Except if you quote that statement. ;)

Jill: I’ve been doing slides that are heavy on visuals. As a nod to subsequent viewers I’ll either post notes or, in my most recent case, make a voiceover recording to go with the slides. Personally, I often found that even in looking at slides that have a lot of text I don’t always get much out of it. But I think your first job is to the people in the audience. Less text, more visuals will (I think) be more interesting to them.

Gotta disagree with Jill for the most part. The slides are for the audience at the presentation. If you are concerned about people who weren’t there or about your audience having something to remember your key points by, make a separate handout with an abstract, citations, outline, or whatever they’ll need. This is a tip I picked up from Edward Tufte, and something I did for my Internet Librarian preconference talk: http://academiclibrary2point0.pbwiki.com/Interface

regarding the pictures/lasting value issue: couldn’t recording the talks and having them be available be a great solution to this issue? that way people viewing afterwards get most of the experience.

@Darlene – thanks for adding those in. i totally agree re: finding a voice. that’s important for writing and speaking.

I think one of the difficult things we have to deal with in the library world is that “presentation” can mean a lot of different things and yet many people approach them all as an opportunity for slides and a handout. I agree with your major points Aaron.

My Dad always said “tell them something they don’t already know” and other people advise making a story out of it. While I try to have one handout because people seem to like handouts, I also put all my links online. No one should have to type out a URL.

For talks about the web, the difference between a live demo and a screenshot of a website is HUGE. No one should have to give a talk about websites with the fear that the internet might be down. I say that if the internet is down I’ll do a puppet show because why bother?

If I’m really on top of things I’ll make a PDF of my slides that also has my notes with them at the bottom. I don’t see a reason to have my slides stand alone as a talk as if I wasn’t there. Me being there is why the talk is worthwhile, in my opinion. Lots of people can put a decent talk together, but it’s harder to hold an audience’s attention for a few hours and/or give them stuff to think about that really makes them think on their way home.

So, I’d suggest people think about types of talks and how what we do should be different or even if it shouyld. I’m often invited to give

- keynotes
- workshops
- CE classes
- trainings
- hands-on events

and most of the time it’s the same slides+room with chairs+audience with no computers and it’s really difficult to figure out what the best strategy is. Thanks for opening up this discussion Aaron.

I do more teaching than presenting. I agree with Jessamyn that different types of presentations should be approached with different rules. Some advice I would give is:
Don’t fear dead air – At times its best to take a moment to pause and gather your thoughts rather than blathering on semi-coherently.
Repeat yourself (this is probably most important for teaching). People will more likely hear, understand, and remember what you are saying if you say the same thing in at least two different ways.
As most of my presenting is about physical preservation I have what I feel is a great advantage in that I am able to use a lot of physical props to display what I’m talking about. (And, if the group is small enough, I can pass the props around – which also helps learning and retention.)
And my thoughts on slides – they should illustrate the talk, like a nice illustrated book. Handouts should summarize the talk and include any preferred resources (and should be available online).

“they should illustrate the talk, like a nice illustrated book.”

Hmm, a deceptively simple statement. It’s like:

presentation = talk + slide
comics = text + picture

There’s an article (or blog post) in there somewhere.

I recently co-presented a session at the Virginia Library Association Conference. Our slides were sometimes textually “busy” but we told the audience up front that all of the slides are available on the Web.

In fact, we put all 4 of the sessions our library system presented on one site (roanokepl.wetpaint.com) and added additional info and links there. The response so far has been good; we’re hoping the site extends the “life” of the presentation and allows us to see what questions audience members had and what they wanted more of. This feedback will help us craft future talks.

Not all of my expectations were met using a supplementary website. As this was my first library conference I was surprised at the lack of laptop and cell phone use during the presentation; I expected folks to be checking out the website while I was talking! In the one session I attended that listed a website I brought up the blog and bookmarked it while waiting for the presentation to begin.

I agree it’s good to watch expert presenters – check out TED and Google Talks as well – and any video presentation by Seth Godin. You may learn a thing or two that can help – such as improving the timing of your delivery – how to start or end the talk. But I’d encourage librarians not to feel they have to be as good as these folks. Keep it in perspective. These are professional presenters – they get a lot more practice doing it then we do. It’s hard to get great at anything that you only do a few times a year. Just try for personal improvement over your last presentation. It may help to write a few notes right after your presentation – what you did well – what you’d like to improve – and then work on it.

You all gave some good ideas for the presenter. Here’s what I want to do for the attendee – what I’m aiming for as a presenter:

1 – No one looks at their watch.
2 – They are inspired
3 – They remember what I said after the presentation
4 – When they look at things they’ll see them differently – or see things that others may miss.

Thanks, Aaron! That tech failure was pretty harrowing. Printing my notes moved way up my prep list, in addition to all of your wonderful tips!

Jumping late into the discussion- I posted my IL slides, which were very visual, and my notes (as well as what I actually said) for the reasons already covered here (visual slides are nice for the audience, notes are nice for post-audience folks).

Jessamyn’s point about distinguishing between types of presentations really hit a cord with me. I realized recently that my earlier presentations suffered from a classroom model that didn’t apply in a talk. Techniques used in computer classes for the public or BI sessions don’t always carry over to a hotel ballroom full of librarians!

I posted a collection of links, “Talk Good: How to Give Effective Presentations” a few months back: http://librarygarden.blogspot.com/2008/02/talk-good-giving-effective.html.

To add my own thoughts: I prefer to frame this as giving “effective” presentations rather than “good” ones because
effective implies that you’re actually trying to, well, have an effect. And I think that one of the most important elements of any presentation starts before you’ve written one word or found one cool image for your powerpoint. The most important thing is to ask, “What do I want people to do as a result of seeing/hearing my presentation?”

Should your slides be graphic heavy? Text Free? Should you provide handouts? Should the presentation be posted, and if so in what form? Should additional information be included in the posting? My answer is, it all depends. I think it makes absolutely no sense to dictate the answers to these questions without first asking, “what am I trying to achieve?” The next question of course is, “and how can I best achieve it?” How you answer this question dictates your content and sequencing.

There are also many variables that will affect how you craft your presentation: Just a few variables of the top of my head:
- Who will be in the audience? Is it heterogeneous or homogeneous? Are there certain people in the audience with more influence that I would like to reach?
- How large is the audience? Will I get to mingle? Am I miked, or is it more intimate?
- What is there outlook?
- What is their predisposition to change their behavior? Are they a friendly or resistant audience
- What is their knowledge level?
- How much time will I have to present?
- How much other information is being thrown at them (am I the main act, or one presentation of many?
- What technology tools do I have at my disposal? Live internet? Projector? Just a microphone?
- What is the room setup?
- Will the presentation, or parts of it, be archived or made available online after the fact? Do I intend this to ever be seen again?
- Is the presentation intended to be instructional? provocative? informative? heretical? inspiring? challenging?

I’m sure you can think of more variables that you’ve considered when crafting your own presentations. The important thing is to continually refocus yourself on what you are trying to achieve and critically evaluate the content and sequencing of your presentation to make sure everything supports and nothing detracts from your goal.

A few other ideas that may enhance the effectiveness of your presentation:

Share your presentation with others before you do it and get feedback to see what’s working and what isn’t. Inevitably, you will have written things that are clear as crystal to you, but clear as mud to others.

If it’s appropriate to the presentation, try to make it as interactive as possible. Ask questions. Encourage audience members to talk to each other. Doing this early in the presentation with a provocative question can create an immediate buzz and get a lot of energy flowing.

Conclude the presentation with a challenge or a request. Ask something of the audience. Ask them to commit to doing one thing differently.

As usual, great post Aaron.

A few things also pop out at me:
*LISTEN to your audience. I love hearing from the people that come to my presentations so I can learn from their experiences. Conferences are learning opportunities, not just for attendees but for presenters as well.
*Know your audience. Presenting to librarians does not mean that we all have the same skill set or the same knowledge base, especially when it comes to technology.
*Repeat the question. This is my personal pet peeve: great questions are asked but go unheard by most of the audience. Be sure to repeat the question you are about to answer so everyone is on the same page.

And, by the by, I learned everything I know about putting pictures in presentations from Aaron. His presentations are pretty awesome!

thanks for good suggestion.