Seven thoughts on mastering your research presentation

I’ve been reading Garr Reynolds‘ Prezentation Zen blog for years and I am always impressed with how he learns from the things around him about various aspects of presentations. He is an American living in Japan, and as such draws a lot of his inspiration from Japanese culture.  Today he posted Presentation (and life) lessons from the dojo. I think we all have something to learn from judo practice. He makes the following statement

True humility is a sign of strength, over confidence or arrogance is a sign of weakness

And then presents seven rules from the martial arts that one should consider. I want to apply these rules to research presentations:

All presentations are sales presentations…

Why do we make presentations? The more I think about it, the more I realize that we do them because we want to sell something… maybe not a physical product, but something: maybe a viewpoint, some information, a concept, interest in your services,… whatever.  If you don’t want the audience to have “something” after your talk, why bother?

Next time you are doing a presentation, think about what you are selling…
and to whom you are selling…
only then can you decide on the perfect pitch, because you want to make that sale!!!

Good presentations can’t salvage bad content

The number of presentations in the world must be staggering.  I would not know how to estimate it, but thinking about presentations made me think that we can classify any presentation in one of four quadrants:

Blaming technology… oh so convenient!

Bad workmen blame their tools

Lately I have seen several mentions to bad, bad Powerpoint…  A conference bans the use of Powerpoint, the NY Times has a front page article portraying Powerpoint as the enemy…  But how much of the blame can really be attributed to Powerpoint…?

Powerpoint and parenting…

Well, you may ask, what has parenting and powerpoint in common?  My initial answer would be that, except that they both start with the letter “p”, not much.

However, in a conversation today I was reminded of a presentation referred to by Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design in her excellent book slide:ology. The presentation refers to Dan Posts’s “punishment” for his kids – making a presentation!!! Hear Dan talk about Bungee Chord Parenting a.k.a. Dad 3.0.  (OK he did not use Powerpoint, but Apple Keynote…)

Makes the parent in me think… (and worry a bit)