Test conference season is upon us, and so begins the onslaught of \u201cslides\u201d from powerpoint \/ keynote \/ (google docs presentation app whatever-it\u2019s-called). I have seen hundreds of presentations on a wide variety of subjects over the years and thought I\u2019d share what I know about what a presentation tells you about the presenter.<\/p>\n
The \u201cfreshmen\u201d presentation<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cNew\u201d presenters typically have a lot of slides with a lot of bullet points. If someone says this is their first time ever presenting, you will want to sit in the front row where you can view the 8-point type clearly. If you need to, you can scootch your chair a bit farther forward for clarity. If you can\u2019t get a seat in the front, don\u2019t worry \u2013 fortunately these people will read every bullet point. If you are confused about the topic, the freshmen also have that covered \u2013 their first few slides typically contain definitions from wikipedia or dictionary.com, complete with pronunciation guides (\u201cmetric\u201d is a very difficult word to pronounce). <\/p>\n Design is typically black text on a white background (aka the default powerpoint design)<\/p>\n The \u201csophomore\u201d presentation<\/strong><\/p>\n The sophomore presentation experience is all about design. Two main things differentiate the sophomore from the freshmen. The presenter has some experience (i.e. they\u2019ve explored powerpoint more). In order to show their presentation maturity, their presentations now use one of the \u201cfancier\u201d design templates available. Most often, these use dark text on a slightly darker background \u2013 something that looks \u201cadvanced\u201d on a laptop screen, but looks like an oil spill on a portable conference projector. There is slightly less text per slide than the freshmen, but they make up for the space by splattering bits of clip art on each slide. Sometimes the clip art has something to do with the topic, but the main rule is that it has to fill up dead space.<\/p>\n Speaking-wise, sophomores don\u2019t generally read every slide. Because they are experienced in presentation, they no longer practice presenting with their slides, and because they no longer practice with their slides, they tend to forget what they\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n The \u201cjunior\u201d presentation<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, you\u2019re beginning to see the cream of the crop. These people have read about presenting, and are often (self-proclaimed) \u201cexperts\u201d. For example, they\u2019ve read that bullet points are bad, and pictures are good. Their presentations are filled with full page photos The \u201csenior\u201d presentation<\/strong><\/p>\n These are the people you pay to see. They may use any of the techniques above \u2013 pictures are a must, as is enough text to show off their credibility. Also \u2013 and this is very important \u2013 senior presenters absolutely must dedicate at least <\/em>25% of their allotted presentation time to talking about themselves<\/em>. If you are a senior presenter, it is imperative that you sound<\/em> like you know you\u2019re stuff, and to do that, you need to establish credibility. These people may include the dictionary.com definition, but the difference is that they invented the word<\/em>!<\/p>\n Post-graduate presentations<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n These folks tell stories and structure their talk so that you remember the important points and why those points are important to remember. Slides don\u2019t matter \u2013 they can be as effective with bullet points as they can with a picture of a cow farting. At a typical software conference, there are 2 of these (give or take 2). But they\u2019re worth the search.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Test conference season is upon us, and so begins the onslaught of \u201cslides\u201d from powerpoint \/ keynote \/ (google docs presentation app whatever-it\u2019s-called). I have seen hundreds of presentations on a wide variety of subjects over the years and thought I\u2019d share what I know about what a presentation tells you about the presenter. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}stolen from web sites<\/strike> taken on their trip around the world. The photos are very nice and give the audience something to focus on. Unfortunately, the photos rarely have anything to do with the presentation. And \u2013 since the juniors don\u2019t practice their presentations either, they often end up talking about what\u2019s in the photo rather than what they meant <\/em>to talk about. You know when you\u2019ve attended a presentation by one of these folks, because you\u2019ll walk out talking about how good the slides were rather than saying anything about the content.<\/font><\/p>\n