Good Presenters Present Well
Despite the best efforts of sites like Presentation Zen and books such as Beyond Bullet Points, there is still a dearth of bad PowerPoint that haunts us.
The problem isn’t with PowerPoint. The problem is with a lack of understanding how to present. How to perform a monologue with the intent of persuading or educating. A poor presenter is going to be equally poor whether fumbling with cue cards or reading directly from their slides. An amateur presenter can do away with the slides of a thousand bullet points and will be just as unfocused and across the map. However PowerPoint gives a veneer of professionalism that was previously unavailable during these dry and rambling proceedings. It makes for a handy crutch that has become a defacto standard in presenting.
There is nothing that seperates the good presenters from the bad faster than when you kick away that crutch.
I’ve seen folks at the podium caught, deerlike in the headlights, when their presentation crashed or failed to load. We’ve all seen discussions grind to a halt as a five minute tech support break occurs at the front of the room as they try to figure out why there’s no sound to the video. I’ve seen presenters spend most of their talk inadequately trying to describe what we would have seen if only their presentation hadn’t been mislaid by the courier.
So last Wednesday, as I watched Mark Robinson’s laptop freeze at the beginning of his presentation, I began to cringe.
I’ve been working with Mark on an illustration project for these past few months. His presentation at Showcase Ontario was part of the his program’s launch, so when the laptop froze more solid than a spring day in Nunavut, it could have been a disaster. But it wasn’t. On the contrary, Mark handled the difficulties with ease and a professionalism that many a corporate executive could take note of. While it was clearly not the talk Mark had intended to give, people still lef knowing the information that Mark wanted them to have.
I should have known Mark was on the ball by the fact that he not only had his presentation on disc and memory stick, but that he arrived early to preload and test the equipment to be used. It’s just Murphy’s Law that the laptop refused to advance past slide one.
But Mark didn’t miss a beat. He made light of the technical difficulties and swung the audience to his side. And whilst the techie was fetched, he launched ahead to a humourous portion of the presentation not reliant on the PowerPoint. While he kept things light, the laptop was replaced and his presentation reloaded. Then the new laptop refused to play a key part of his presentation, a series of videos his team had produced. I relaxed this time as I now knew that Mark could handle it, as he did. Shifting to Q&A, Mark continued to hold his audience whilst the techs scrambled to get a DVD player hooked up to the projector. The videos were played and all was well.
We could examine the individual tricks and techniques that were employed (have a paper copy of your presentation, have a backup electronic version, arrive early and test test then test again). We could resort to maxims such as Murphey’s Law or Mark’s mantra that ‘the greater the tech, the harder the fall.‘ Personally, I think it all comes down to: good presenters will present well.
