The Mobile Presenter

In her book, The Non-Designers Presentation Book, author Robin Williams argues that a presentation should start with an introduction into the topic, like the preface in a book. [I]t's the foreplay before you start reading. We enjoy that process., she writes.

I happen to disagree with this advice. Actually, I've stopped reading forewords in books. They usually only tell me how important the topic is or how great the author is. I'm not interested in this any more. I already bought the book; just take me to the content already!

One of the big problems for a speaker is getting good, usable feedback for your presentation. You won't get it directly from your audience after your talk - people are too polite. Would you go up to a speaker and tell him or her that the presentation sucked and that you want your hour back? No, you wouldn't. If it was that bad, you would just leave the room and forget about it.

People are willing to argue with the speaker about certain aspects of the content but they don't usually comment on the form or the overall effectiveness of the presentation (e.g. whether or not it met their expectations). The most reliable feedback, in my experience, ends up in the feedback form (electronically or on paper) that the event organisers prepared. And even then you need to motivate the audience to fill those out.

So it was interesting to see a new (to me) approach being tried out at a conference that I attended recently: Feedback by coaster.

This may sound like a silly question. How can you not know which language your presentation is going to be in?

English is the language that's spoken the most at conferences (not limited to tech conferences) these days. But what about a conference in a country which does not have English as its main language? Which language would you use? Especially if you're a native of that country?

If you're only doing presentations in English in English-speaking countries then you can probably stop reading now.

Imposing restrictions can often make things more interesting. When it comes to presentations, one such example is Pecha Kucha. The idea behind this format is that a speaker only gets to show 20 slides - and that the slides are moving forward automatically after 20 seconds. So all in all, you have 6:40 minutes for your entire presentation.

I've read about Pecha Kucha but hadn't seen it live until a few weeks ago, when I attended a Pecha Kucha night in Stuttgart. It was very interesting to see how the 10 speakers dealt with the restrictions.

It seems to be a bit of a trend right now and I also catch myself doing it on occasion: Having a slide with only a photo on it - but no words.

When you talk to people about embracing a more visual slide design, some get it - and some only embrace it half-heartedly. The latter group often ends up producing slides that have a somewhat relevant photo on the right - and a list of bullet points on the left side. People in the other group sometimes tend to go to the other extreme and start using slides that only consist of photos - with no text at all.

Neither of these approaches is ideal.