1. FT228-3 Team Software Development Project
Presentation Skills
Ronan Bradley
Brian Mac Namee
Module Web Page:

3. Contents In today's lecture we’ll discuss giving good presentations
Presentation PMI
Edward Tufte’s Tips
How to use PowerPoint well
Other presentation tips
Death by PowerPoint?

4. Presentation PMI
Let’s do a quick PMI on presentations that you have been at
P: What things have people done in presentations that have worked well?
M: What things have people done in presentations that have worked badly?
I: What interesting things have you seen people do in presentations?

5. Edward Tufte’s Presentation Tips
Edward Tufte makes the following suggestions for giving presentations:
Show up early
Have a strong opening
What's the problem?
Who cares?
What's your solution?
On every subtopic move from the particular to the general and back to the particular
Give everyone at least one piece of paper
Show up early, and something good is bound to happen. You may have a chance to head off some technical or ergonomic problem. Also, whereas at the end of a talk people are eager to rush off and avoid traffic, at the beginning they filter in slowly. It's a great time to introduce yourself.
Have a strong opening. Tufte offers a few ideas for structuring your opening:
Never apologize. If you're worried the presentation won't go well, keep it to yourself and give it your best shot. Besides, people are usually too preoccupied with their own problems to notice yours.
Open by addressing the following three questions: What's the problem? Who cares? What's your solution? As an alternate but more sophisticated technique, Tufte offers the following anecdote. a high-school mathematics teacher was giving a lecture to an intimidating audience: a group of college math professors. Early in the presentation, the teacher made a mathematical error. The professors immediately noticed and corrected the problem. And for the rest of the lecture, they were leaning forward, paying attention to every word, looking for more errors!
PGP: with every subtopic, move from the Particular to the General and back to the Particular. Even though the purpose of a subtopic is to convey the general information, bracing it with particulars is a good way to draw attention and promote retention.
Not so much a tip as a law: Give everyone at least one piece of paper. A piece of paper is a record, an artifact from your presentation. People can use that artifact to help recall the details of the presentation, or better yet to tell others about it.
Know your audience. This is of course a general piece of advice for public speaking, but Tufte adds his own twist: know your audience by what they read. Knowing what they read tells you what styles of information presentation they are most familiar and comfortable with. Adapting your presentation to those styles will leave fewer barriers to the direct communication of your material.
Rethink the overhead. Tufte spent a lot of time explaining why the overhead projector is the worst thing in the world. There's a lot of truth to what he said. Bulleted lists are almost always useless. Slides with bulleted lists are often interchangeable between talks.
The audience is sacred. Respect them. Don't condescend by "dumbing down" your lecture. Show them respect by saying what you believe and what you know to be the whole story.
Humour is good, but be careful with it. Humour in a presentation works best when it actually drives the presentation forward. If you find you're using canned jokes that don't depend on the context of the presentation, eliminate them. Also, be very careful about jokes that put down a class of people. If you're going to alienate your audience, do it on the merits of your content.
Avoid masculine (or even feminine!) pronouns as universals. It can be a nuisance to half the audience. As universals, use the plural "they". The Oxford English Dictionary has allowed "they" as a gender neutral singular pronoun for years.
Take care with questions. Many people judge the quality of your talk not by the twenty minutes of presentation, but on the thirty seconds you spend answering their question. Be sure to allow long pauses for questions. Ten seconds may seem like a long pause when you're at the front of the room, but it flows naturally from the audience's point of view.
Let people know you believe your material. Speak with conviction. Believing your subject matter is one of the best ways to speak more effectively!
Finish early, and something good is almost bound to happen. If nothing else, people will be able to leave early, and suddenly they'll have an extra couple of minutes to do things they didn't think they'd get to. People will really like you if you do that.
Practice. Practice over and over and over. If you can, record your presentation. Play it back and watch yourself. You'll discover a thousand horrible, horrible things you never knew about yourself. Now watch it again without the sound. Why are your hands flying around like that? Now listen to it without the picture. Get rid of those ums! Now watch it at twice the normal speed. This emphasizes low-frequency cycles in your gestures.
The two most dehydrating things you can do in modern civilization are live presentations and air travel. In both, the way to stay sharp is to drink lots of water. Take care of your body, especially your voice. If possible, avoid alcohol too.

6. Edward Tufte’s Presentation Tips (cont…)
Know your audience
Rethink the overhead
The audience is sacred
Humour is good
Avoid masculine (or even feminine!) pronouns as universals
They has been accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary for years
Take care with questions
Let people know you believe your material

7. Edward Tufte’s Presentation Tips (cont…)
Finish early
Drink lots of water
Have a strong conclusion
Think about all presentation possibilities
Practice, practice, practice
Film your presentation
Play it back and watch yourself
Watch it without the sound
Listen to it without the picture
Have your first couple of lines rehearsed

8. PowerPoint Done Well Tips for good PowerPoint presentations
Include only necessary information
Avoid long paragraphs of text
Don’t overcrowd the presentation
Don’t forget to spell check
Don’t be afraid to use pictures – but be careful of overused clip-art
Be consistent with formatting
Have a backup plan
Remember slides are not the same as notes

9. PowerPoint Tips: Colours & Fonts
Limit the number of colours
Use contrasting colours for background and text
Try to think about accessibility
Font:
Always use size 20 or bigger
Larger font may be used for emphasis
Somebody who is colour blind won’t be able to read this!

10. PowerPoint Tips: Colours & Fonts (cont…)
Using too small font is impossible to read
CAPITALIZE ONLY WHEN NECESSARY
Don’t use complicated fonts
Using a font colour that does not contrast with the background colour is hard to read
Using a different colour for each point is unnecessary
Using a different colour for secondary points is also unnecessary
Trying to be creative can also be bad

11. PowerPoint: Colours & Fonts (cont…)
Avoid backgrounds that are distracting or difficult to read from
Always be consistent with the background that you use

12. PowerPoint Tips: Animation
Using animation in PowerPoint is almost always a bad idea!
It just confuses people and makes your slides take forever to appear
Also you spend all of your time pressing the next slide button
So don’t do it!
Except when it adds to the clarity of your presentation

13. Oral Presentation Tips
Some tips for oral presentations:
Body language is important
Speak loudly and clearly
Try to put some feeling into your voice
Do not read from notes
Maintain eye contact with your audience
Speak to your audience
Don’t be afraid to take a pause
Don’t be afraid to correct yourself

14. Handling Questions
Questions at the end are just about the most important part of a presentation
Repeat the question to the audience
Restate or ask for clarification if necessary
Request that questions are asked during the talk or afterwards
Avoid prolonged one-to-one discussions
If you can’t answer a question, just say so
Have a dedicated questions slide

15. Conclusion
The most important things to remember when giving presentations are:
Think about your audience
Think about your objective
Think carefully about visual aides (slides)
Speak confidently, clearly and to the audience
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE

16. Questions? ?