Worst presentation of my life
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Totz8aa2Gg Last Friday, I listened to a webinar on “Your new failure imperative”. Interesting conversations (and tweets). Failing and admitting to failure is hardly anyone’s favorite past time, but you can certainly learn a lot from failure. As my recent presentation at the GIS Conference went fairly well (…), my thoughts went back to a time when I failed miserably at presenting a paper.
As our memory deceives us, this is probably not how it went, just my version of it: there was a conference at EPFL (1989?), I prepped a paper presentation with a colleague. He would do the presentation, but turned ill. There I was, fresh out of college in a full room with potential listeners. All I could come up with, was to read the text out loud. As I was running out of time, I was requested to ‘just tell us what my paper is about’. I thought that went well and realised should have done that from the start. It certainly was the worst presentation of my life.
I have received several questions and request for tips about presenting. It is maybe one of the secrets of the GIS Conference that for years, speakers may participate in a one-day workshop on presenting well; that would be my real tip. Otherwise, here are my two cents:
– Be clear about the structure of your presentation before you make it
– Try to make a few points-to-tell and a few points only
– Repeat these points you want to make several times
– Use images, text merely as a guideline (and for re-reading)
– Practice in front of a group a colleagues
– Be able to summarize your talk in 6 minutes
– Take enough time for the preparation
– Add a personal touch to your presentation (in the story and/or images)
– And what I learned this time: write a paragraph of text about your presentation. Just a title is hardly enough for a potential listener to get an idea about what he/she might want to hear.
*At least you can only have one worst presentation…