How to Create Slides that Don't Suck (and Help Others Do the Same)

Hello and welcome to how to create slides that don't suck,

and help others to do the same.

I am Erica St. Angel of Sonic Foundry.

I am John Pollard of Sonic Foundry.

August second, 2011.

And this is a webinar presentation.

A few housekeeping items for today's live webinar.

Welcome to today's webcast.

Before we start we have housekeeping items.

You can ask a question at any time using the ask button.

Please include your email in case we don't get time to

answer your question live.

There are additional resources in the links tab.

You can watch on demand by clicking the same link that

brought you here today.

Without further ado, the presentation will begin now.

Oh my goodness.

I hope that was painful for you.

We hope that was painful, and we apologize if you thought

that's where we were going.

And we apologize if you've had to sit in

presentations like that.

And that's what we're going to try to avoid.

I think we should start over.

We should start over.

Let's do that.

We're here to talk about how to create slides that don't

suck and help others do the same.

I'm Erica St. Angel.

I'm John Pollard.

And if you're on Twitter I'm @EricaStAngel.

And I'm @johnp_sofo.

And we're also using the hashtag @mediasite, and we

have our lovely colleague Kristen here, who's monitoring

your questions on the ask button.

It's a little speech bubble.

You can ask at any time, or send us a tweet.

Say hello, Kristen.

Hi all.

Hello.

Thank you Kristen.

So we're going to start off giving you some sure

fire ways to suck.

We'll talk about some ways not to suck, and then we'll give

you some tips on using technology.

And then we're going to walk through some good resources

that are available in your links tab, it's a little paper

clip in your player, and I think more than any webinar

we've ever done we have more resources there, meaty things

for you to look at.

We're also going to talk about great slide makers and the

different approaches they take to making great slides in

great presentations.

And we're going to put out there who we think, maybe, is

the greatest presenter alive right now.

So let's get started with ways to suck.

One sure fire way to fail miserably is to just jump into

PowerPoint, start typing away without having any idea where

you're headed.

You will fail.

I tried to avoid using suck there for a moment.

The other sure fire way is to do what we just did at the

start of this presentation, which is plan to read from

your slides.

To fill those slides up with bullets and

just read them verbatim.

The audience will really, literally, hate you.

They will.

And also, another way to fail when you're giving a

presentation is to not have any clue what

your main point is.

To have absolutely no idea what's the one main thing you

hope people take away from your slides and your story.

But we want you to take heart, because a lot people say

PowerPoint by death, and it is a weapon, but we hope today to

give you some skills to wield it in a positive way that will

create benefit for you as a presenter, and

also for your audience.

One of the things, if you're a presenter, to remember is

people, in general, want you to succeed.

We right now feel like you on the other end of this camera

want us to do well, and people generally do

want you to do well.

So that's something you can share with your presenters as

you're trying to encourage them on becoming better

presenters, is that people really do want you to do well.

So before we go to ways to not suck, maybe we should recap

the ways to suck.

Recap.

The first way to suck is to jump into PowerPoint and just

start typing without having any idea where you're going,

and then planning to read from your slides.

A lot of text is also helpful if you want to suck.

And have no idea what your main point is or what you hope

people will take away from your presentation.

And you will suck.

You will.

So let's talk about ways to not suck.

This is the single most important thing we want you to

take away, so I'm telling you it's the single most important

thing we want to take away from today's presentation.

What's the single most--

Single most important thing is that your story comes first

and your sides come second.

You need to figure out what it is you're trying to convey,

the information, and however your process is for doing

that, whether it's writing out long form, using index cards,

you can use Powerpoint, but the key is that you're not

then leaving those slides in there just as a

narrative of text.

You want to come up with that story, and after you've built

the story then go back and build the slides.

So story first, slides second.

And as you're looking at your story, what you're going to do

is think about the images or concepts that might support

that visually.

And that's really to use PowerPoint as a visual

support, and that's where you're going to make a big

difference in improving your slides.

We like to recommend you use large images, simple images,

and maybe even think about metaphors for what you're

doing in your story so that it will just augment what you're

already telling in person.

And then the other way to keep people excited about what's

going on and about what you're presenting is

to engage the audience.

So you can do that a number of ways.

You could ask a question, you could use humor, you could

surprise people, and experts generally agree that you want

to do that every 7 to 10 minutes within or throughout

your presentation.

And what we've done here is actually insert a slide that

reminds us we need to engage our audience.

So it's a reminder to you.

We should do that.

We should.

Ask us a question, click on the little speech bubble at

the bottom of your player or near your video window and

Kristen will cue those up for us.

And the great thing about asking a question in this

webinar is when we go to the end we're going to pick two

lucky questions to win a new book.

Two books, actually.

We have two books.

So go ahead and ask questions.

Well, before we move on to ways to use technology we're

going to recap for you ways to not suck.

And the first is, most important thing, story first,

slide second.

Again, you should be the person owning the material,

you're the expert, people came to see you, not your slides.

You want your slides to support what you have to say.

And then we want you to use meaningful images, large,

simple images, that portray or help augment what you're

talking about, and then we'd like you to

engage with your audience.

Those are great ways to avoid suckage.

So now we're going to go on to technology.

When you're using technology in a presentation, such as

we're doing today, we'd like to encourage you to use the

interactivity that's available.

Now you're going to use a lot of different platforms in your

career, and they'll vary in what they offer.

Today we're offering ways for you to ask questions, we're

offering some polling features, things of that

nature, so we're going to try to use those throughout our

presentation to keep you engaged with us.

And again, insert a slide that reminds you that

it's time to engage.

So it's time for our first poll, which is the question,

which comes first?

And you'll see the two answers in there, and we'll check in

with Kristen at the end to see how you did.

And the poll icon is the little pie.

Little pie chart.

So you can answer that, we'll look for that.

Now the other thing when you're using technology is to

consider where your content is going to be appearing.

In our case today, depending on the player experience, you

may have varying amounts of space around you.

All of you will have a banner, you'll be seeing a

banner above us.

So the nice thing about that is if I know that I'm gong to

have a banner above me with my the company's logo and things

of that nature, I don't need to put that in every slide, so

I can use the full real estate for the visual image that I

want to support what I'm talking about.

So I don't need to necessarily get crazy with logos here and

all sorts of negative space, because in this case today,

for most of you, the negative space is already created by

the player.

And even outside of a digital environment, if you're not

doing a webinar, if you're actually presenting in a room

with other people, if you're presenting at a corporate

presentation, for example, chances are if it's internal

you all know where you work and you all know what your

company logo looks like.

So maybe don't include the logo on every single slide.

And if you're in a conference presentation you might be

wearing a badge, or there might be other banners in the

room physically around you that are going to remind

people where you're presenting.

So unless you're using that as some type of guide for

yourself to figure out which presentation is which, in

which case I'd say use it in the name, but you don't

necessarily have to include all of that other branding.

It's going to take away from your message, and most

importantly, from your story.

Because it's really about story first, slides second.

Now many of you are probably sitting there the whole time

saying, yeah that's fine for you, obviously you guys can

get away with that, but we're stuck with corporate template.

Well, we agree, that does suck, but you can

still make that work.

As you see here, we're just slapping a big image in there

that represents what we're talking about.

We still have the logo and whatever visual treatment that

some corporate VP, such as her, would tell you to use.

And this, in fact, this is our corporate template.

We just choose, most of the time, not to use it.

But you can do a mix, too.

I think most people, if you have few slides in there,

maybe it's your title slide, maybe it's your contact slide,

if you have a few in there sprinkled that use the

template, most people will give you a pass for including

other large images.

And also that changes up the frequency of the types of

material that you're showing, which will help keep your

audience engaged.

Yeah, it surprises the audience when they have that

big image, and that really, I think, keeps them engaged.

The other thing we'd recommend is to discover presenter view,

which is a way of viewing your presentation while

you're giving it.

So you'll see on here a laptop that shows the big slide,

that's what the audience sees.

On the smaller monitor, that's what you would see as a

presenter, and it's going to show you the slide you're on,

all of the slides that are coming up, and

also the notes field.

And if you've never viewed that, if you play around on

PowerPoint you'll do view and then notes.

You'll see this area of blank space where you can type.

And that's where I'd recommend, if you're a bullet

person, and there's nothing wrong with that--

It's OK.

It is, it's OK.

So go ahead and make your presentation however it feels

most comfortable, but then consider moving all those

bullets, moving all that text into the notes field.

You'll still be able to see it in presenter view, so it'll

have all your crib notes and your little cheat sheets and

remember to smile and whatever guidance you give yourself as

a presenter, but then your audience, you have a ton of

real estate, then, to put a great image.

So this is a painful slide for me, not only because what the

image is, which is really me in my real pajamas in my real

office, but it's also me watching myself back.

And if you're in an environment, either you're

doing a webinar or if you're presenting and there's someone

there recording that at the conference, or internally in

your company if you have a colleague that you can say,

hey, hold up your camera record my presentation, or if

you do it at home with a web cam.

The key is, once you get yourself recorded doing your

best delivery, go back and watch it.

It's really hard to do and generally painful the first

few times that you do it, but you learn a ton about when

your slides don't really match up to what you're saying, when

your slide is maybe talking more than you are, saying more

than you are, distracting from you as the presenter.

And you also learn about your tells, about the things that

you do like um and so and oh on this slide, things like

that that will take away from that the power of the story

that you're telling.

And I'm not sure, but I think the snowflakes are optional.

They are, except in Wisconsin in the winter they're nice to

have.

Those flannel?

They are.

We want to recap?

We should recap.

Some great ways to use technology are to leverage the

interactivity of the player, design your content for the

context that it's going to be in, and then we want you to

make the best of the corporate template if you absolutely

must.

Discover presenter view, which is a way to still keep your

bullets in front of you but your audience isn't seeing

them, and then watch yourself back and look at how you

present to your slides and which one's coming first,

because it should be a story first, slide second.

Now we're going to great resources, or good resources.

Well the first thing, if you go back and you look at what

we're talking about here, images a big part of what

we're recommending, and large images.

So it's nice to have high quality images, and

iStockphoto is one place, photos.com another place,

there are others.

These may cost you a little bit, but it may be worth the

impact, especially if you're representing your company,

that a high quality graphic portrays.

And you can search on a number of terms, which will allow you

to bring up images that are closer to the story that

you're trying to tell.

So I often am looking for metaphors and things of that

nature, and I'll search on those metaphors in able to

find the pictures that I'm looking for.

And once you purchase an image it's yours to

use again and again.

So you can start to build your own library, and the same

image you might use a bunch of different times but to say

something slightly different, too.

So the other thing you can do is to

simply take photos yourself.

I was doing a training session with my friend and colleague

Shane Tracy, here in this picture, and I needed an image

that represented exactly what he's doing, and I just took my

phone, grabbed a picture, and in a couple

minutes I'm good to go.

So that saved me searching, it saved me all sorts of hassle,

and it also gives my presentation

a little more character.

So instead of having that teamwork image where

everybody's hands are over each other and the same thing

that everybody's seen a kazillion times off in the

corner there, without the bullets of course, you can do

something like this and make a high impact, potentially

surprising way to engage your audience.

And this is maybe an unlikely candidate for great images,

but Microsoft within PowerPoint has already

populated it with great slides, great images.

They're already sized perfectly and compressed to be

optimal for use in PowerPoint.

So if you go into insert image, avoid the clip art, you

could probably try to do a presentation with clip art but

I wouldn't recommend it.

So avoid the clip art and search for photos.

And you'll see in there, many of the major companies like

Veer and istockphoto.com, many of them have contributed some

of these images, but they're not rights managed.

They're free, wide, and open for you to use, and there's a

nice little search engine within it.

Good place to start.

And if you're looking for more images like the one John was

talking about, where real people are taking the shots,

you can use Flickr.

It's a social sharing site for photos.

And on there if you search in creative commons, those are

people who have openly contributed their content and

have set rules for either it's wide open, anybody can use it,

or you can use it for educational purposes.

So if you're in academia in particular and you're

concerned about copyright, there's a multitude of ways

that you can search.

The other option is to attribute the

image to who took it.

So you just put a little image provided by or image taken by

in the lower corner.

And next up is Google.

If you go to images.google.com you can search

for images that way.

I would highly recommend that you leave the safe search on,

or at moderate or higher, because there's a lot of wacky

stuff out there on the web.

But if you click on the advanced search tab then you

can either, again, do the same thing, you can cite the

source, just put a little copyright, Erica St. Angel,

whoever took the photo, or search for reuse, which means

either images that have been posted on the web and marked

to Google, indicated to Google that these are wide open for

anybody to use.

As a recap, you can go istockphoto, photos.com, you

can take pictures yourself.

Search Microsoft, search Flickr, search Google, and

when in doubt just cite your source.

Good tips, now moving on.

Great slide makers.

Great slide makers.

This is Seth Godin, he's a marketing guru.

He speaks a lot at TED and he's written several books.

And his main piece of advice when you're doing slides is

fewer than six words per slide, which John was kind

enough to point out that I have failed on this slide.

But the idea is less text.

And if you find yourself adding more than six words per

slide, he would argue those are probably two slides.

So you might have a ton of slides in your presentation,

but each one has just one key theme or one key point.

I like that guideline a lot, I do.

I don't get too hung up on the number of words.

Now Guy Kawasaki here, he's a former Apple evangelist. He's

a blogger, he's out there raising venture capital, doing

all sorts of crazy things.

He has a little rule, it's called the 10, 20, 30 rule,

and before I tell you what that is, I want to share what

it's aimed at.

It's aimed at people who are pitching to VCs, venture

capitalists.

So he's trying to keep things short, concise, and

that sort of thing.

So he says 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30

point font or higher.

So his idea is all about keeping it short and simple.

Now, the problem with having 10 slides is, obviously, I bet

there are going to be a lot of bullets.

So that's where I am maybe not such a Guy fan, however I like

the 30 point font rule a lot, because when you're trying to

make things clear and visible.

And depending on where your content's being displayed,

that readability is really important, and depending on

who your audience is as well.

This font here, I believe, is 36 point font, just for point

of reference.

So that's Guy Kawasaki.

And in that vein of there's no right answer in terms of one

golden rule, except for maybe story first, slide second.

Other than that, these are all great presenters with great

slides, but completely different approaches.

This is Lawrence Lessig, he's a Stanford

University law professor.

And if you've never seen him present, I really recommend.

It's completely different than anything

I've ever seen before.

And there's actually a link to his presentation in the links

tab, that little paper clip that you can click on there

and watch him.

But what he does, he has hundreds of slides, and as

he's talking he's so practiced that his slides almost become

an underlining, or bolding, of the words

coming out of his mouth.

And John was laughing at me because I was talking about

rap, and you might think, what does this

chick know about rap.

I was thinking that.

You all are right now.

But the idea is that in rap somebody's rapping, and then

someone else is repeating those same words at the same

time, and again, it's almost like an audio version of bold.

And that's how he uses his slides.

Not very many images, quite a bit of text in some cases, but

the text that's coming out of his mouth is exactly the text

that's on the slide, but it's the way he delivers it that

allows you to break that rule of see and say.

And I don't know if you said this already because we

practiced this so many times, but it's like a

roller coaster ride.

Once you get on with this guy you cannot get off.

I don't think it's something that everybody can do, but

it's really cool to see it in action, and it might open your

mind up as to different ways that you could use

presentation tools like PowerPoint or Keynote.

This is an example from a book that we're going to be giving

away, Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen, and the

whole idea about this is keeping your slides simple.

So what he does here is he starts with something that's

very mediocre and then he talks through how he makes

that into a meaningful slide, simple, focused on the key

elements you want to convey.

I'd like to hear Erica talk about it, so I'm going to let

her talk about it.

Nice.

So I'm going to read this slide to you so you get the

full effect.

According to the ministry of labor, 72% of the part time

workers in Japan are women.

And we've all seen slides like that, somebody slaps some

clipart on there and goes, slide success, I've done it.

And then you might say, all right, I'm going to push a

little bit farther, and because it's a percentage I'm

going to show it as a pie chart, and again, part time

workers by gender, women and men.

The challenge there is you're not really

engaging the audience.

You're still saying the information.

They could read it without you saying it.

That slide tells the story without you being there.

When you move into the bottom, that's where you start to

engage in slightly different way, a more human way.

And so, again, 72% of part time workers in Japan are

women, but it's really when you carry it

into the final slide.

And you as a presenter, you have the information there you

need in order to retell that.

I can even say it without looking.

72% of part time workers in Japan are women, because the

72 is there and the woman is there.

But now that slide doesn't tell the story alone, you're

there, you're the expert, and people are paying attention to

you, and not your slide.

Your slide's just there to support it.

You're the story, the slides are the support, which is the

story first, slides second.

So poll number two.

We're going to engage with you.

So what is the most important rule, I'm going to read it,

for making great slides?

So go ahead and answer that.

And while you're answering that I'll point out that

another way to engage, especially for those of you

who combine an on premise event with the virtual

audience hybrid event, one way to engage the audience is to

make sure that you're regularly making eye contact

with the camera, just like you would the audience.

So it's a speaker rule, I know I'm supposed to be looking

around, making eye contact.

I want to do the same thing with the camera, just treat it

like another member of the audience.

Thought I'd throw that in, a little bonus.

So shall we recap our great slide makers?

That would be awesome.

So we started with Seth Godin, which is the fewer than six

words per slide, or if you can't abide by that rule the

idea of just one key idea and a small amount of

text on each side.

Then we talked about Guy Kawasaki's 10, 20, 30 rule.

What is the 10, 20, 30, John?

10 slides, 20 minutes, and 30 point font or greater.

Nicely done.

Thank you.

Then we talked about Lawrence Lessig, who flies in the face

of both of those.

Tons of slides, a little bit of text, but he's using it to

underscore his story, and they don't speak without him.

And then lastly, Garr Reynolds, keeping it simple.

We're in the home stretch.

We almost rapped.

That would be cool.

That would have been cool.

So we're now in the home stretch.

We're going to talk about the greatest

presenter, that we think.

It could be controversial, you may disagree, it

is, but here we go.

That's Steve Jobs for those of you--

If you don't recognize him.

And we're going to break down for you why

we think he's great.

And it's partly his slides, but also his story.

So first with his slides.

He doesn't use a lot of text.

He doesn't use a lot of images, he doesn't use a lot

of anything.

He shows the thing he's talking about, which you go,

iPad 2, and when he was presenting this everybody

went, wahoo.

How was it?

Wahoo.

Then you're immediately right back to him.

Yeah, it says an iPad 2 is coming, but

that's all it can say.

So downloading a deck from his presentation is not going to

do a lot for you, because all the information is with him.

He's the expert, he's the story.

He also creates one memorable moment.

And I remember this, this is the Mac Air, when it came out

and they brought it out in an interoffice envelope, and they

opened it up, and that was the picture that

went around the world.

That's what they used for their advertising campaign.

He's Steve Jobs, but as a regular presenter, what's the

one thing you want people to take away, what's the one

memorable moment that you want people have in your

presentation?

Story first, slide second, that's ours.

This is representative of what we've been trying to do.

What Steve Jobs does really well is he chunks up his

information and then he tells you what he's going to tell

you, he tells you it, and then he tells you what he told you.

So he creates these nice, neat, compact little sections

of the presentation.

You can never get lost. And by the fact that he says, here,

I'm going to tell you this and we did that, and I told you

what we did, he's also ingraining that into your

little brain, or your big brain, so that you can

remember what was going on.

So it's very easy to follow Steve Jobs along.

The other thing Steve Jobs has is passion.

You as a presenter, or your people, your friends that

you're trying to encourage, man I hope that you are

excited about what you are talking about.

Because if you are not excited about what you are presenting

about, please go find something else to do.

Because it is painful for the rest of the people that are

having to watch that.

I think it's just one of those things.

If you're getting up there, you know something about this

content, so act like you care about it.

Even if you're talking about insurance or banking or

whatever that is, there's still some

cool stuff about that.

And I think the one way you can support your friends who

you want to be better presenters is to encourage

them and let them know that they are the experts, and that

people do actually care about what they have to say.

Absolutely.

And if you're not in the webcasting environment, even

if you're just in a corporation, or you're working

with other people on their slides, just asking them

what's the one thing you want them to take away from today,

or why are you excited about this presentation, showing

interest in what they're about to present and in their slide

material is going to help them feel more passionate about

their material, about their presentations.

Finally, Steve Jobs does something that many of you

probably were hoping you could avoid, and that is practice.

Everything we're talking about today is actually going to

involve work.

You can't make a great presentation, you can't make

great slides, without taking some time to create that

story, to find the perfect image, and then to put it all

together in a neat package by going over it again

and again and again.

And there is just no substitute for hard work and

Steve Jobs proves that.

He's good for a reason.

Now we know that what we've shown you today might take you

out of your comfort zone.

And this feeling of, this is not the PowerPoint that I grew

up with, it's not the PowerPoint I'm used to.

And we hope that you'll channel that into

just trying it out.

And John and I were talking before this presentation, I

remember the very first time I took an image and I stretched

it full screen across the slide.

I was physically flustered, going, can I

get away with this?

That's what I kept saying.

Can I get away with this, or is anybody going to look at me

and say, who does she thinks she is that she can

present this way?

And I was so pleasantly surprised by the response,

because people were like, wow, we can do that?

It was cool.

So once the VP of communications, the VP of

marketing, starts doing stuff like that, obviously that

gives us permission.

That changed how we tell stories here at

Sonic Foundry forever.

And now we've built a common image library, and we work

with each other to say, hey, do you have an image for this,

or what I'm really trying to convey is that.

It's built a community of people who are propelling

themselves, trying to get better each time they present.

And experiementing, too.

Absolutely, definitely.

Because it doesn't always work, and that's the reason

why rehearsing is so important.

But we know, again, you're not in Kansas anymore, but we know

you're capable of this, and that's because--

You're good enough.

You're smart enough.

And gosh darn it, people are going to like you.

And your presentations.

So now we're going to take some questions from you, and

two lucky question askers--

Don't let that be your memorable moment from today.

Story first--

Slides second.

So we're going to take some questions and we're going to

choose some people to win a book or two.

I can say that I've never had this many questions come in

during a webinar, so this is fantastic.

Several questions that I'll group into one category,

they're very similar, but people who are presenting

technical presentations, so they have R and D information,

they have scientific training, there are screen shots, a lot

of technical information that they need to share, how can we

take that information and make it more digestible, more

graphic in nature like you're recommending?

Well John you've given

presentations like that before.

I think that's a great question.

I'm not going to pretend to be the expert, but I've done a

lot of product management over the years and so I agree that

there are times when you're going to need to have

something that's a little more complex.

And the nice thing about the player that we're in right now

is that you can actually get to the native resolution of

our slides.

So if we had a complex technical drawing, you could

actually zoom in and see that.

Now the question is, would something like that be better

suited to a document that distributing and that people

are looking at.

Is that the best way?

When I'm presenting in front of a large room, I guess I'd

have to understand what the story is.

What's the point that I'm trying to get by?

If you demoing software, or doing any kind of

demonstration, or walking someone through a process

though, I do think the more that you can do that live, and

actually be within the application that you're

showing, there is a level of interactivity there that

happens that doesn't happen when you try to do a screen

shot of each of those individual pieces of

information.

But I would also really recommend the Garr Reynolds

book, because he actually takes that head on.

There's also great book called Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte

that talks about how do you take technical information and

turn it into something that has an emotional connection?

And I would say that little slide exercise we did with the

72% of part time workers in Japan are women is a good

exercise to think about as you're going through your

presentation.

And when we launched one of our new recorders a few months

ago, we focused on the numbers, 39% lighter, had an

image of that.

Now granted, if I'm talking about the schematics of the

motherboard and things like that.

But again, is PowerPoint the right place that discussion?

I don't know.

And if it has to be, I would still go back to our initial

thing we hope you take away, story first, slide second.

Whatever it is that you need to say, consider what it would

be like if you presented that presentation without slides at

all, and you just talked people through it.

Or if you're doing a one on one training

demo, maybe start there.

But it's a really tough thing, and I

don't envy your challenge.

Good question.

So here's another question about engaging the audience.

This comes from Lee.

She asks, if you are doing a PowerPoint to present a report

on a project you've completed, how do

you engage the audience?

Do you ask a question on what they think we found in our

research before we unveil that result?

Any advice?

That's a great one.

Well, you can ask the rhetorical question.

Even just asking a rhetorical question

engages their mind, right?

They're thinking, what do I think about that?

And also, engaging the audience can sometimes be

engaging your fellow panelists, or even engaging

yourself, because if you ask yourself a question, if I ask

John, I say John, should we break it down, should we go

back over that?

It's breaking up that flow of wall of sound and causing a

moment where the audience goes, oh

wait, something's changed.

So if they're checking their email they're going to go, oh

wait, something different is happening.

The other thing too is, depending on what your

audience is like and if you have a chance to do polling or

quizzing, you could actually quiz people on the different

chapters of what you're presenting as it goes.

Ask them what they think happened, present what

happened, and then ask them what your

actual findings were.

And maybe have discussion about why did you think it was

going to go that way, and why isn't it going that way now.

I think the key thing here is time.

You need the time to figure out what's the information you

need to present, and then be able to take a step back and

say, OK, how do I insert some moments where I'm interacting

with people?

It takes time, it's not easy.

Here's another one.

I think this is good.

How often do you recommend switching speakers?

Is there a maximum number of speakers recommended?

I guess it would depend on what your timing is, your

panel, and how much rehearsal you have. I've been on a lot

of panels lately where we don't rehearse at all, we

don't really talk ahead of time, and we get there and

each person does their individual nugget, and then we

all talk about it at the end.

I think you could do it a couple different ways.

We generally here, mainly because of the size of our

webcasting room, usually try to limit it to three or four.

So a moderator plus three or four people presenting.

And that's generally, we find that there's a good mix for

that for about a 45 minute to a 60 minute time slot.

If you start to get into, say four, five, six people, when

you only have, say, 45 or 60 minutes, it's a lot.

Everybody has something to say and something to get out.

I have seen it effective, though, when you have people

present in that, get it started, and then maybe you go

to a break out session.

We've done this at our own user conference, where we kick

it off and we know that we're going to leave it up in the

air and people are going to want to engage more, and then

we schedule a break right after those sessions.

That's a great thing to do before a reception, or say an

internal company meeting where the information gets

presented, but then you're going to go have a networking

function afterwards.

Can you talk about what the co presenter should do when the

other presenter is speaking?

Well I have been trying to look at John while he's

talking, I've been trying to look at the camera, and I've

also been trying to remember to smile, because it's easy,

when you're not on, talking, to just go eh.

Here's I think, a good guideline.

If I'm treating you like a third person in this

conversation, I'm going to look at you, I'm going to be

listening to her, I might be looking at the content.

I'm going to bounce around here.

I'm not the expert on this, but I would

say try to be natural.

It depends, too, on are you on camera?

So you just have this box that we're presenting in, or are

you on a stage?

When you are on camera, sometimes when we have

somebody presenting where there's someone who starts,

then it goes over, say it would go to John for 15

minutes and then come back to me for 15 minutes, then what

we'll do we'll actually have the camera pan in.

We chose not to do that today because we knew we were going

to be talking over each other.

The other thing you could do is make faces at her.

I would not recommend that.

But it is another way to engage the audience, because

as we're engaging with each other, again, it's trying to

make you feel like you're in the conversation with us.

What we're trying to do is create a moment here where you

think, gosh, they're just going to fall apart here in

any moment.

So that's tension where you're like, oh, I

want to see that happen.

That's why live really works.

That's why people come to presentations, because I want

to hear what's happening and I also want a chance to affect

the outcome of that presentation with my

questions, which is what we're doing now.

So I think we have time for maybe one more.

OK, here's one more.

This comes from Mike.

Do you recommend using a teleprompter, especially for

highly technical content?

Can I jump in?

I've actually worked for two governors, and they always use

the teleprompter, no matter what.

And I think for something where you have a very minimal

amount of time, where you have a huge audience, and you have

a ton of information to get through,

yes, it can be effective.

However, I think when you're presenting like we are right

now, or if it's not a super formal environment, it's not a

state of the state address or something like that--

This is pretty close to that.

Of course.

It feels like state of the state, doesn't it?

But I feel like it's not as natural, and people aren't

maybe going to root for you as much.

It's going to feel a little bit more

televised or produced.

And we really believe that, the way video is going and the

way that presentations are going, everything's becoming

more natural.

There's a back channel, there's Twitter, there's

people in the room who are interacting,

there's break out groups.

The idea is that you're involving more people in the

conversation of you presenting the information than just you

presenting the information.

Teleprompter really pulls away from that.

Your personality shows a little more too when you're

speaking to some bullets and some ideas rather than just

reading something from a script.

How often do you want to see the President speak his mind

as opposed to the party line?

Now that said, we do that here internally.

We don't actually use a teleprompter, but we have a

little poor man's system for putting up a Word document

with a script on it.

We'll use that for short modules that we're creating

that are solely on demand.

They aren't for a live audience, and they need to be

polished and they need to convey a whole bunch of

information in a short period of time.

And then I do think that type of an environment is great.

But for a live presentation I think it takes away something

from the connection that you have with the audience.

Great question.

So we've run a little bit over, so we apologize, but

we're glad you stayed with us.

And now we're going to give away the two books.

So we're giving away Presentation Zen by Garr

Reynolds, and also The Presentation

Secrets of Steve Jobs.

So Kristen's going to tell us who's the lucky winner for

Presentation Zen.

Presentation Zen goes to Mike Zinner.

Congratulations, Mike.

And who wins Secrets of Steve Jobs?

That goes to Scott Shank.

Fabulous.

Congratulations Mike and Scott.

Amazon will be sending those out to you shortly, we'll

correspond to get your address, and thanks John.

Thank you Erica.

I had a good time today.

I'm passionate about slides.

She is, I see that.

And thank you for taking a little bit of your day to hang

out with us and hear our opinions and our thoughts

about what we think makes for a great presentation.

Good luck at making your slides better and helping

others to do the same.

And if you'd like to watch this presentation again, the

link that brought you here today will play it for you

again, feel free to share it with your colleagues.

And I think the last thing we want to say is story first--

Slides second.

Thanks for watching.