{"id":946,"date":"2015-10-14T12:42:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T19:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=946"},"modified":"2015-10-14T12:43:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T19:43:21","slug":"prezo-prep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/prezo-prep\/","title":{"rendered":"Prezo Prep"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is completely inspired by Trish Khoo\u2019s post on Preparing for Your Presentation<\/a>. I was going to add a comment, but it got too long, so it\u2019s becoming a blog post. Go ahead and read that first \u2013 it covers way more than I\u2019m covering here, and it\u2019s a well written article.<\/p>\n

Trish suggests starting early, and I can\u2019t stress that enough \u2013 but there\u2019s some flavor to the timeline that has worked consistently well for me. As soon as I know I\u2019m doing the presentation, I make an outline. Sometimes I make the outline in powerpoint, but usually I start with Word (or notepad, or onenote). This helps me get my story together and give me an idea of what I want to say. I\u2019ll add notes on what I want to research. I\u2019ll read through it dozen times or so over a few days and add or edit as needed.<\/p>\n

And then I\u2019ll ignore it for at least a few weeks.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if I can recommend this for everyone, but (assuming I\u2019ve started early enough), during the few weeks away, my brain has subconsciously worked out a lot of the details. Whenever I come back to the outline, I immediately see obvious<\/u><\/em> edits and areas to clean up. Usually this is the time I shove the outline into powerpoint and make a skeleton slide deck.<\/p>\n

Trish also suggests nailing your intro and having one big message. For me, these are the same thing. At this point, I spend some time thinking about \u201cthe one thing\u201d I want to get across. I not only figure out how I\u2019ll work the message into my intro, but I\u2019ll figure out how I repeat the message throughout the presentation. This also means that I usually find really \u201ccool\u201d material that I remove from the presentation because I can\u2019t make a strong connection from the material to the message. It\u2019s a tough decision, but it helps make the presentation clear.<\/p>\n

The last thing I do is turn the text \/ bullet points from my slides into speaking notes and make the slides more about the concepts and ideas I\u2019m talking about. I may use screen shots or stock photos \u2013 it all just depends. One word of warning though \u2013 I see a lot of people pull keywords from their slides into a search engine and grab whatever photo shows up. Beyond potential copyright issues, often the picture has nothing to do with the actual subject (e.g. if you\u2019re talking about working with Red Hat Linux, by all means, don\u2019t show a picture of a random red hat as your bullet-point-replacement).<\/p>\n

From there, I tweak, tweak, and then tweak a little bit more. I know it drives conference organizers crazy, but the \u201cdraft\u201d I deliver to them a month or two ahead<\/em> of the conference is rarely what I present at<\/em> the conference. Sometimes parts of the presentation just don\u2019t \u201cclick\u201d until late. Of course, it\u2019s possible to over-tweak, but I\u2019d much rather give the best presentation possible for the audience than match what I temporarily thought<\/em> was complete a month or two ago.<\/p>\n

One more thing<\/h4>\n

The only thing not<\/em> on Trish\u2019s list that I want to add is that it\u2019s really important to check out the room first. Try to watch at least one talk in the room you\u2019re going to present in to get an idea of size (if it\u2019s a long narrow room, take time to increase font size), or noises (so you won\u2019t be as surprised if the kitchen is next door). Figure out in advance if you can put your laptop where you want, how you\u2019ll pull off interactions, etc. As a last resort, if you can\u2019t see another talk in the room, get there early, get set up, and get as much of a feel for the room as you can.<\/p>\n

One more more thing<\/h4>\n

I\u2019ll be fair. For keynote presentations, tutorials, and the like, I will always<\/u> apply the above steps. It works for me, and I see no reason to change it. I think (hope?) it\u2019s a reason I\u2019m invited back<\/em> to many conferences.<\/p>\n

However, I give a lot of smaller talks (meetups, q&a sessions, etc.), and for those I prepare on a much lighter level \u2013 usually because I\u2019m speaking on experiences or I\u2019m confident I can wing it on the subject matter. It took a long time before I could pull this off, but I\u2019m ok doing it now for some types of events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is completely inspired by Trish Khoo\u2019s post on Preparing for Your Presentation. I was going to add a comment, but it got too long, so it\u2019s becoming a blog post. Go ahead and read that first \u2013 it covers way more than I\u2019m covering here, and it\u2019s a well written article. Trish suggests…<\/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":true,"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-946","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\/946","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=946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}