Good Presentation

How to Avoid Boredom in Delivering Same Topic Presentation Frequently?

February 19, 2020 by Muhammad Noer

Being a speaker for the same topic so frequently or routinely and over a long period of time will certainly give you a sense of saturation. This boredom can have an impact on the way you deliver your presentation to audience.

That same topic will also resonate differently to audiences who happen to have heard you deliver the topic before. For example, they burst out laughing at your jokes about your topic before, but this time they might just smile.

Well, then how to keep your presentation interesting, even though you are bored. How do you anticipate the same people who have heard your presentation among an audience?

The following are some strategies that can be put into practice to keep your presentation effective.

1. Adjust the “module” of the presentation topic

This term only exists in our mental notes as speakers. Instead of as a whole, try to view the parts of our presentation as a collection of modules.

You can turn your presentations to suit the needs of the audience and ourselves. Make a number of module variations. By changing modules like this, you avoid the boredom of the material itself, likewise with the audience.

Don’t forget to train the entire module variation, so that you can immediately overhaul the parts of the presentation as needed.

2. Throw away all of your notes

This is the benefit to always practice. When you deliver the same topic quite often, you may have memorized everything by heart, but you may also need cue cards.

But, forget those cards or any kind of notes. Memorize the variations, as stated in earlier point. You are flexible in using them. By removing your focus from any notes, you will be free to interact with the audience. You will also be free to improvise and prevent yourself from the regularity of presentations.

Many speakers are reluctant to interact or engage to their audiences because of the fear of losing control, although there are many advantages to making the audience part of the presentation.

To avoid this situation, just ask variety of questions or give instructions to your audience.

3. Utilizing multimedia in “modules”

We know that the use of pictures, music, or videos gives extraordinary impacts in building effective presentations. Now, by breaking your presentation into modules, you can use up-to-date or better pictures, song pieces, or videos to suit the conditions or needs of the audience.

4. Getting to know your audience

This applies to any presentation, whether it’s a first one or for the umpteenth hundred times. The difference is, when you use this strategy in giving a routine presentation of the same topic, you will be more helped in matching modules that can be changed earlier.

Find out about relevant demographic, psychographic, age, gender, etc, so you can choose the module that best fits the audience’s life situation. This information can be obtained from the event organizer or committee.

For example, one time you have to deliver a presentation on the topic of career planning and this time the audience are managers. So, you can take an example of a career journey from prominent company leaders that they might recognize.

Another time, you have to talk about the same topic, with different audience. They are employees who started their careers from general staff positions. Then you have to replace the example with people who are in similar conditions and situations with them.

Similarity will attract the interest of the audience.

5. Adjust to the purpose of the presentation

The same presentation can be used for different purposes. Again, it is important to divide your presentation into modules. For example, you are a regular speaker on business topics. You can change some modules that are more suitable for those who are just starting a small and medium business.

On another occasion, you are asked to speak in front of small and medium entrepreneurs who want to improve their business by using latest technologies. All you have to do is modify an existing presentations (the modules or examples).

When you are considered as an expert in a particular field, the possibility to give the same topic many times in a presentation is very large. To that end, be creative in modifying your presentation, so that it is more suitable to audiences with different backgrounds, and prevents you as a speaker from being bored. (*)

5 Presentation Techniques From Steve Jobs

March 28, 2018 by Muhammad Noer

Jobs’ performance on a presentation is always expected and waited by many people. Through the world-class exclusive presentation technique, he performs how to deliver a presentation in a unique way, like an attractive show, successfully. Here are some techniques used by Jobs that lead him to be a successful presenter.

1. Create stories as a background to your presentation

The first secret is how you create a story behind a presentation. Everyone loves story. The presentation that has a story in it will always be remembered by the audiences.

The reason is very simple, stories are easily remembered. That is why you will always remember your childhood’s stories told by your parents. The audiences will remember your stories and forget anything else.

Steve jobs masters this technique properly. In every presentation he always delivers a story. When he introduced iPod in 2001, he did not explain iPod as a merely MP3 player. He chose to tell a story about iPod as 1000 songs in your pocket.

2. Create simple but visually strong slides

A good slide is usually not a complicated one. A good slide is a simple one, accurate, and helping the audiences to grasp quickly the idea that the presenter wants to deliver.

In every presentation, Steve Jobs always uses very simple slides. Sometimes, they contain just pictures with no words. In another time, they contain numbers, typed with big font size.

Through the appropriate pictures, he wants to evoke the audience’s imagination to imagine what he is explaining.

3. Use three parts rule

In the process of making a speech, we know a term three parts rule. It is done because people are used to understanding many things through three parts.

Jobs knows very well the strength behind this rule so that he uses this trick in many occasions. When he explained about iPhone, Jobs did not tell too many things that can lead people into confusion.

He summarized it as a revolutionary cell phone that has three function: (a) as an entertaining iPod, (b) as a smart phone, and (c) as a great internet communication media. Through these three things, the audiences could easily remember what iPhone is and they could summarize all other features.

The audiences can hardly remember more than three things. On the other side, less than 3 things are too little that makes presentation uninteresting. Use three parts of information to create strength to your presentation.

4. Help the audiences understand the statistics and data

Sometimes a presentation needs statistics and data to deliver important information to the audiences. Unfortunately, statistics and data sometimes are boring.

The question is how to make statistics and data more interesting? Remember! The audiences don’t care about the number you show in your presentation. They do pay attention to the story behind those numbers.

When he explained about the amount of songs that had been downloaded through iTunes, he delivered simple data by saying that 2 billion songs have been downloaded. It means 5 million songs have been downloaded per day.

It also means in a second, there are 58 songs downloaded. To make the audiences easy to imagine, he added, “This happens every minute in every hour every day.”

Now, notice how he could deliver an interesting story behind numbers and statistics. If the audiences were just given data that 2 billion songs had been sold or 5 million songs were sold per day, the audiences would hardly imagine the meaning of the statistics.

When Jobs helped the audiences by telling an analogy that there were 58 thousand songs were sold per second, the audiences could easily imagine that that was a huge amount of songs that had been downloaded.

5. Create extraordinary surprise momentum

A great presentation has something that surprises the audiences. If you want to perform greatly, create a surprise momentum to the audiences. This was what Jobs did in his presentation in 2008: he told that apple had made the thinnest notebook in the world. He showed a picture that showed how thin and light the notebook was.

When the audiences tried to imagine how thin this was, Jobs suddenly took an envelope and take a MacBook Air out of the envelope and showed it to the audiences. They were shocked and mesmerized. He created a surprise momentum in his presentation successfully. Actually, he could just explain about the product monotonously, but it would not give strength and emotional aspect to his presentation.

By taking out a MacBook out of the envelope, the explanation about the thinnest notebook was perfectly delivered. There was no technical explanation needed.

For you who want to be an extraordinary presenter, think and create the surprise momentum that summarized the whole presentation that will be remembered by the whole audiences.

Those are some techniques used by Jobs that make him famous and loved by many people. If you use and apply these techniques, every chance you have will be the mesmerizing presentation to the audiences.

If you want further understanding about these techniques, you can read book entitled “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs – How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience” written by Carmine Gallo, a columnist in Businessweek.com.

How to be a Good Speaker in a Presentation

November 22, 2017 by Muhammad Noer

Do you want to be a good speaker and to impress your audiences at the same time? Well, there is no shortcut for such things. You have to practice and practice industriously and learn from the experts and also explore your speaking ability in every occasion.

Here are some tips you can practice in everyday life.

Learning by observing

The easiest thing for you to learn is observing how good presenters perform. You can learn from TED videos that you can watch for free. For instance, you can learn by watching global or local TED like TED Jakarta.

Besides TED, you can also watch Pecha Kucha videos. There is something interesting while you watch Pecha Kutcha videos. Each video shows a presenter performs 20 slides which every slide switches every 20 seconds automatically. Each presenter must make sure that his presentation corresponds to every change of the slides.

Learning by Practicing Together

You can also improve your speaking skill by following Toastmaster club near your place. Toastmaster is a non-profit organization that helps people to improve their speaking skill. You can learn further about it in this article.

Learning by Following Training Class

Besides doing autodidact learning from videos, observing other speakers or joining speaking club, you can also learn by joining training.

The advantage of joining training is that you will be managed to improve your presentation skill, from formulating your presentation’s material, transforming it to visual slides in instantly and delivering your presentation convincingly.

Now let us go back to our topic, how to baa good speaker.

1. Deliver a Story

A good presentation doesn’t only give facts and data but also wraps it with good story to make your presentation understandable.

2. Know Your Audiences

Knowing your audience is imperative. You will deliver a presentation to them so you must know who will attend to your presentation. You must know their position in their company. By this way, you will be well connected to them

3. Visualize What You Deliver

Delivering a good presentation needs a skill to elaborate complex idea into an intelligible visualization. That’s why besides you must learn how to speak understandable language, visual slides also help you to perfect your presentation.

4. Speak Naturally

A good speaker doesn’t pretend to be anybody else. He just becomes the way he is. By speaking with your own style, your audiences will see you as a confident speaker because you are the way you aye and not being exaggerate on everything.

5. Perform with Confidence

Show yourself! Deliver your ideas! Don’t hide behind your slides! Use a clicker to help you move from one slide to another easily.

6. Do an Eye Contact

Among many tips to perform in front of audience, eye contact is one of the most important things. Eye contact shows that you care. It is a prime stage to create connection between the speaker and the audience.

7. Don’t Do a Blocking towards Your Audience

It’s a sin if you do this thing: block the audience. Don’t block your audience even though your presentation is over. Can you imagine what you feel when someone is not facing towards you while you have conversation with him? You will feel that you are abandoned. That is exactly what the audience feels. That is why don’t make a long and gobbledygook slides. Instead, you make visual slides which are more interesting and evoking the audiences.

8. Don’t apologize

Apologizing is a good thing. But apologizing to the audience as an excuse of your imperfect presentation is bad because it just shows that you are not a credible presenter. So, make sure you avoid such thing!

You are a star in your presentation. You are the one who manage the scenario of your presentation. So, take control!

Preparing A Good Presentation With Mind Map Techniques

August 2, 2017 by Muhammad Noer

Brainstorming techniques using the post it could be one way to prepare your presentation. It collects your ideas and you can compile them into a presentation framework.

You can also use another way, that is using Mind Map techniques. According to Tony Buzan, Mind Map is a graphic technique which provides a universal key to unlock the potential of the brain. It suits the way the human brain works. It will make

it easier for you to remember and compile information.

In this way, we make notes that connect one information with others, along with pictures and colors to help the association in the brain.

This technique is popularized by Tony Buzan, an education expert.

Mind Map Techniques For Presentation

Similar to brainstorming, we can started from the main topic, then look for anything related to that. If brainstorming is initially unstructured, Mind Map makes the ideas have structured from the beginning.

For example, if I want to design the material on how to build a learning organization, then I can make streaks of mind maps as follows:

Pembuka: Opening; Buta huruf abad 21: Illiteracy in the 21^st century; Ubah sikap: Change attitude;

Langkah: Steps; Isi: Content; Masalah: Problems; Komponen: Component; Tantangan: Challenges

Tidak sulit: It’s easy ; Ringkasan: Summary; Penutup: Closing; Solusi: Solution; Paradigma: Paradigm;

Pendukung: Support; Pendekatan: Approaches; Contoh: Examples; Mulai: Start; Kompetisi: Competition;

Komunikasi: Communication; Atraktif: Atractive ; Provokatif: Provokative

Step One: The Title

The first step in creating a Mind Map is to set the title of your presentation. Create a big headline in the middle of the page and give an illustration to represent it.

Step Two: Determine Main Branches

Mind Map will help you recognize and create presentation structures from the very beginning. In this example, the presentation structure is made very simply by consisting of three main branches. The branches are: Pembuka (Opening), Isi (Content), Penutup (Closing).

Step Three: Develop Each Branch With Required Details

Now you have a big picture with three main branches. Next develop each branches. For example, for the Opening branch, I will start with a quote from Alvin Toffler about ‘buta huruf abad 21’ (illiteracy in the 21st century). Then how to change the attitude from lazy learning to spirit and what steps are needed.

You can see that these three steps are created with concise keywords and sentences that represented them.

After that, I developed a second branch of the content. Here you can see what the Mind Map will discuss about the organization’s learning issues: why it happens, what components in the learning organization and the challenges it faces.

The problems are answered with solutions that will discuss: learning paradigm, supporting factors for learning organizations, approaches that can be done, and actual examples.

Finally, the closing branch is developed very simply in the conclusion that build a learning organization is not difficult. Any organization can do it as long as it has a strong desire. The presentation ends with a statement and a summary.

Step Four: Use Mind Map As Your Presentation Flow

Once the Mind Map is complete, you can check whether the plot is strong enough and coherent. If there something is not logical, you can make the necessary changes. Once you are comfortable, then you can turn the mind map into a presentation slide.

Step Five: Use Mind Map As Your Powerful Reminder and Notes

The Mind Map that you have created is not only help in making the presentation slides. It can also be used to help you remember when delivering presentations in an actual session. In the example above, I just remember the Mind Map I made, move it into my head, and I will remember the entire flow of the presentation.

6 Principles to Create A Good Slide for Presentation

July 18, 2013 by Muhammad Noer

A good presentation slides will help you in delivering a good presentation. Before opening PowerPoint software and creating your slide, you need to understand what the role of a slide in a presentation is.

In this article, you will learn slide as visual aid and how it complements your role as a presenter. You will also learn key principles to make slide for presentation.

Slide and Visual Aid

Basically, slide has a function to support your presentation. Slide is not the presentation itself. The role of slide as presentation aid is different than your role as a presenter. Slide is necessary to explain something which is difficult to describe it only with words. We know that an image could represent a thousand words. A good slide should be able to summarize the message to make the audience understand it easily. Additionally, using a slide, you can present a trend, comparison, and highlight key points that is more difficult to be explained by words.

Don’t forget, slide is not the only visual aid for presentation. There are many other visual aids that you can use, such as flipchart, video, sample of product, and other things. Don’t just stick to slide when it comes to visual aid in your presentation.

Basic Principles to Create a Good Slide

There are several basic principles that should be carried out to create a good slide for PowerPoint presentation. If you follow these principles, your slide will function as a tool to aid your presentation. Your slide will not be the problem that could divert the audience’s attention from the presentation itself.

Following are the principles:

1. Simple

The best slide is usually simple, easy, and to the point. Your audience is busy people. They have so many things to do. They have so many concerns. Help them with simple and to do point PowerPoint slide.

This kind of slide will offer you flexibility in giving explanation. The more complicated a slide, more time would be needed for the audience to understand. In some cases, you will face difficulty in explaining the slide.

2. Necessary or Unnecessary

Before you make any slide for your presentation, ask yourself, “Is it necessary?”

Think why you need the slide before actually creating it.

Ask yourself, “Do I need 10 slides or just 5 slides should be enough?”

“Could I combine several slides into one?”

“Could I replace the slide with a brief explanation to the audience?”

Just asking yourself with these questions will help you creating an effective and efficient slide. A slide that is necessary and not just nice to have.

3. Background and Readable Font

Today, you have a choice among thousands of backgrounds and fonts available. You will be tempted to use and experiment with so many choices.

Any combination should be okay as long as you create enough contrast between background and font. If you choose dark background, make sure to use light font color so it will be easier to read and vice versa.

Preferably, choose maximum 2 fonts for one slide. You can also use these 2 fonts for the entire presentation.

Why? Because too many fonts will make your audience’s eyes tired. Your audience will get confused because they cannot see consistency and connection between slides. A good font for presentation is the one that does not have too many decorations. It should be easy to read such as: Arial, Verdana, Trebuchet. You can use decorative font for title or supporting text, but not for the body text.

4. Avoid Bullet, Use Less of It

When possible, avoid bullet point. It is the most boring slide that makes people feel asleep.

But if you must use it, make sure they are less than 7 bullets in a slide.

Too many bullets will make the font getting smaller and unreadable. No need to create a slide if your audience cannot read it. Use slide as a summary of your thought and ideas, not as your speaking notes.

If you have more than 7 items to show, try to make it less and concise. Remember, maximum 7 lines. Less is always better.

5. Image, graphic and diagram

Slide is visual aid to help you explain complex ideas in an easy way. Therefore, use image, graphic, chart or diagram to show your ideas visually. A good slide can summarize complex things into simple visualization which is not easy to be explained orally. Therefore, take the advantage of using a good image, graphic and diagram.

Choose the right image to support your thought. The right image could represent a thousand words. On the other hand, wrong image can create confusion. Image should be relevant with the content and able to help the audience understand your explanation. On the contrary, irrelevant image will distract audience’s attention as they have difficulty to associate the displayed image with the content of your presentation.

In term of graphics or charts, there are numerous graphics that you can use to support your presentation such as bar, pie chart, line, or combination of those. You have to pick the right graphic to have a great influence on the audience so they will understand easily the content of your presentation.

For instance, bar chart is the most common and suitable graphic to explain growth for a certain time period. Pie chart is best used to show proportion comparison. The round shape of cake makes the audience easy to associate the portion of cake to make comparison. Line chart is relevant to show a trend within longer period of time. Understand what you want to communicate first then select the best chart for it.

Diagram is very useful to explain the steps of a process and the relationship between them. Therefore, the audience will understand effortlessly the most difficult part of the presentation.

6. Use Color Combination with Good Contrast

Choose several colors for your slides. Use colors that have enough contrast especially between the background and the content. Use colors in a consistent way and repeat it in your slide decks. Do not use different colors in every slide, because it will create distraction to your audience as well as it looks unprofessional.

Those are the 6 principles that you should know in making a great presentation slide.

Final Thoughts

You might also wonder about how to use template which has various colors and styles? After all, you can use template that follows the principles above. Try to select template without complex background that could take more space and attention in your presentation. This is important, because the template background will show-up in every presentation slide from the beginning to the end.

What about animation, transition’s effect between slides, and the use of sound? You must pay attention carefully on these matters. Regarding to animation, motion image or image that changes frequently could distract the audience’s attention easily. So, you should ask yourself whether it is necessary or not for your presentation. In certain condition animation could be useful to explain a complicated technique process in a way that the motion image will show how the process works. Other than that, I suggest not to use animation.

Furthermore, you should pay attention on the transition between slides and how the text would appear on the screen. In this regard, I am more conservative and rather choose the simple transition such as Appear or Fade in PowerPoint. The reason is, this kind of transition does not cause too much of distraction. Besides, if you use it appropriately it will add strength to your presentation. For example, if you explain a diagram which presents stages and you want the audience to see each stage, then you should use this kind of transition. Avoid using transition that makes the text spinning around or moving sideways from left to right, the letter appears one by one along with the sound of gunfire and other exaggerating accessories.

Finally, I don’t recommend to use sound, unless, you are showing a video in the presentation. Many presentations look very unprofessional and might disturb the audience’s attention when every paragraph appears with the sound of gunfire, hand clapping, or camera shoot. Be aware that you are delivering a presentation not presenting a special effect of a film.

Hence, those are the guidance that you can use as reference to create presentation slide. Hopefully this guidance will help you to prepare the slide very well and effectively. After all, slide is only a tool which aimed to support the success of a presentation.

If you have any comment about this, please share your point of view.