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Need presentation advice!
Chris Kresser | Mar 27 2008
I'm giving a two-hour seminar to a mixed audience of faculty, medical professionals, students and the general public at my graduate school in a couple of months. The title of the presentation is "The Truth About Cholesterol: Separating Fact from Fiction". Because of the varied nature of the audience, I will be expected to present a fair amount of data - but to do it in such a way that the layperson with no scientific training could understand. I'm following the format outlined in Presentation Zen (i.e. minimizing text, simplifying charts & graphs and relying heavily on stock imagery) and that is working well for me. I recently bought Beyond Bullet Points and have been trying to integrate some of Cliff's story structure ideas, but I'm having a hard time with that. I have some questions I'm hoping the hive mind can help me with. 1) How can I keep people engaged and interested throughout such a long presentation - and still get through the considerable amount of material I need to present? 2) What is your opinion about the BBP suggestion to use full sentence headlines on every slide? I'm finding that a bit limiting and repetitive visually. 3) Along the same lines, I'm having a hard time organizing my presentation in the rigorous way suggested in BBP, i.e. with everything in groups of three. My mind just doesn't work that way, and there's something about the hierarchical structure that feels stale to me. On the other hand, I understand the necessity of structuring the information in a way that is meaningful for the audience. Do you have any suggestions for alternative methods of structuring content? Thanks for your help. Chris 4 Comments
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 "my mind just doesn't work that way" - Good!Submitted by John_at_154 on April 1, 2008 - 2:51pm.
Out of order responses to your questions: 2) Beyond Bullet Points is such a great resource for encouraging structure, but if the "parallel" structure of headlines on each slide feels wrong to you and you've thought hard about whether the audience will be able to follow your overall flow without them, then I hereby pronounce you free to go without them. Consider Lawrence Lessig's awesome presentations: tons of structure, no headlines. 1 & 3) I loved your line about your mind not working in groups of three - it's a jumping off point for me to suggest that the way you keep people engaged and the way you organize your talk are the same thing. There's a reason you're the one giving the talk - something about cholesterol gets you going enough that you've become an expert. What is it? Why is the subject meaningful to you? At the same time, as you point out, there's something there that's meaningful for the audience. Where do those two things overlap? If you start by looking for the common points between what you care about and what your audience cares about, you should find the structure flowing from that. » POSTED IN:
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