Develop a good presentation with blog and Web2.0 (digg, reddit)

Digg results for "DSP"

A good presenter needs a good presentation. There is no way of getting aroud the subject. If you don't have an exciting presentation you are going to give a boring one.

Yesterday I saw a bland presentation. We all know that a great presenter can spice-up any topic. But in the technical world this is not enough. I noticed the the most important aspect is how the presentation fits the topic. This means, if you set the topic as an "application examples" people are going to be expecting and interested in that topic, doing anything else will throw off the audience. This means give a presentation that has good content, has a good flow, gives new information (remember this is tech!) AND is exciting.

One of the best way to do this is by searching on blogs, wikis, and web sites. Than take a look at Digg.com, Stumbleupon.com, reddit, Technorati.com and other "social bookmarking and sharing" sites. Here you will find top stories and sites which have at least gotten votes. If you are doing something complicated remember that it's VERY HARD to keep people's attention without doing something that involves them. In the talk I went to see software demos which worked but did not show anything beyond symbol boxes, dialog boxes, and menus put people to sleep. The truth is, most engineers are not excited about watching someone plopping boxes on a blank page, no matter how good the program works.

Thinking about this issue on the way back I would suggest to any presenter to do the following:

• Highlight clearly what is new and exciting about your presentation.
• In marketing and sales they use to talk about "features and benefits". This is not enough in today's world. Show someting that is interesting to the audience. If you show a design, show how it is done, assume a wide range of knoledge and ask what people know and what they want to see.
• Do not go into a "script" that is longer than 5 minutes. If you are going to show a "how to" imagine that you are on a TV cooking show. When the chef is done kneeding the doug he "magically" pulls out a fully finished cake. They don't do it on TV just because it's TV, they have lost lots of audiences on shows and they know how to make thigs "move along".
• Pick one, ONLY ONE, main message. Don't try to show 5 things. Even if you have all day, leave one impression. Even if what you want to say is not super exciting. Three "messages" are too confusing to people who are not familiar with the topic.
• Put in something "sexy" that is not 100% related to the technical topic. Show a new product (iPhone, digital camera, etc.)
• Finally, be flexible, if you hear snoring from the back of the room, move to the next section.

Once you got a presentation, if you are going to make it to an audience of 50 people, test it! Make it better and TEST IT AGAIN! if you don't have time, go over it yourself and let someone else go over it. You will never think that your material is boring or trivial. Nobody does. So you need to figure out how solicit crituque on your material. Remember, this is not your presentation ability, it is the MATERIAL! Anyone can sit in front of your slides and talk to you on the phone. Good luck and make your presentaitons count.