Business computing

General principles of a presentation

7 December 2004

What is a presentation ?

• Most of us have attended good presentations, as well as bad presentations. What is the difference ?

• A presentation is a one-way exchange of information between a speaker and an audience

• FIRST OF ALL : a presentation has a goal. – It has a goal for the speaker– It has a goal for the audience

What is a bad presentation ?

• It is either a presentation with no goal (just pass the time, for the audience and for the speaker)

• Or a presentation the goal of which hasn’t been reached (or badly)

• In a good presentation, on top of reaching its goal, the communication flows well.

Goals of a presentation

• Goals for the speaker– Convince a board of directors to go ahead with a big project (and

the investment that goes with it)– Present to a sale force the selling plan they will implement

during a whole year– Present the result of a research project, solving some scientific

question. (Implicitely another goal is : get scientific recognition, get more means to further the project.)

• Goals for the audience– Decide whether to invest into a project presented (someone

asking us for our money)– Learn some facts in order to decide a course of action– Learn some new techniques

A presentation obeys the general rules of communication

• There is the verbal communication– Clarity of the message– Well ordering of the idea, the logic– Convincing character of the message– STORY LINE

• And there is the non verbal communication– Body language of the speaker, as well as of

the audience– All the so-called « vibrations »

The story line is the backbone of the presentation

• The typical PowerPoint slides have a line on top.• The main body of a slide is just here to illustrate

the sentence on top.• A good presentation can be read, by just reading

the top sentences (i.e. the story line)• This principle applies to books and to movies

– In the movie industry it is called « the story board »– In books, it should be possible to read only the first

sentence of each paragraph. Sometimes called a « synopsis »

– Bestseller authors spend more time on their synopsis than on the book writing itself

How to make an efficient presentation (cont’d)

• The body of a slide is only the illustration of some point. Some people will need the illustration, some other will go directly to the next point (reading the story line)

• We should start our presentation with a question, that is highstakes, and makes the audience feel concerned

• Example (true story) : How a team of three casino players, recently, won perfectly legally 2 millions euros in UK casinos, with a new fantastic gimmick ?

Points are better than titles.

• A point is a sentence stating something.• Example :

– Title : « Japanese automotive industry »– Point : « there are great opportunities investing in the

Japanese automotive industry »

• The body of a slide is only meant to illustrate the top point, either with a supporting text, or with some numbers, or with a picture.

The Dale Carnegie has roughly the same recommandations

• The four P’s : Plan, Prepare, Practice and Present• Make sure you know your objective as well as the audience’s

objective• The presentation should be a sequence of key-points (the story

line). More than 3, much less than 300. A good number : between 10 and 20. A slide should stay on the screen at least one minute.

• Have an easy to memorise conclusion. The audience should walk away with a simple message in one’s head, being convinced, and wanting to act (along your recommandations).

• My « presentation » today to you, can be summarised as follows : – HAVE A SIMPLE STORY LINE.– KNOW WHAT THE AUDIENCE AND YOURSELF ARE HERE FOR– MAKE SURE THE AUDIENCE WALKS OUT WITH A SIMPLE

MESSAGE AND CONVINCED TO ACT• To be convincing does not mean : to have 300 slides.

The hard parts and the easy parts of a presentation

• Hard :– Have an efficient story line – Be convincing, and achieve one’s goal

• Easy :– Illustrations to the key-points– Master the subject– Like it– Show good manners, be pleasant to look at and listen

to at the board

Mastering the art of presenting is much more important than mastering the bells and whistles of powerpoint

• It is much more important to be able to prepare an articulate storyline that will convince an audience and get us to our goal…

• …than to know all the tools of powerpoint and prepare fancy presentations (here is an obtrusive background)

• No one has ever obtained a $10 million funding with just a glitzy presentation without a strong and well presented content

Example of a terrible message

The personal siteof French economistRobert Boyer

Terrible examples

• One should not disturb the attention of the audience with excessive dressing up of the slides

• or with bells and whistles that attract the audience away from the message

• THIS IS A NO NO !

However, let’s study the technical functionalities of PowerPoint

• It is a Microsoft Office software, with the usual tools we are accustomed to.

• Menu bar• Usual toolbars• And some specificities :

– make a slide show– Slide transitions– Sounds into slides– Slide sorter – Etc.

A powerpoint presentation is a sequence of slides

• Each slide should contain (on top) one KEY POINT, and its body should be a supporting illustration of the key point

• The slide sorter helps us reorganise (if necessary) our key points

• Remember : the difficult part of a presentation is the story line. Everything else is easier

The question of transitions

• Since a presentation is a sequence of slides, it is important to have nice transitions

• (This is true in any communication : it is to make fun of Poivre d’Avor that the satirical show on Canal + has the Poivre puppet say all the time :   sans transition ! )

• Let’s not mix up logical transitions from animations !

DO NOT OVERDO TRANSITIONS

• If we overdo transitions the attention of the audience will be distracted and our message will be lost

• And possibly the $10 million we would like to get will be lost as well

The basic tools to « dress up » a text

• We have the formatting toolbar to implement the usual « bold », « italics », etc. « center », « change color », « change font size », etc.

There are three basic types of illustrations

1. Text

2. Tables of numbers

3. Pictures

An illustration with a table of numbers : the French government debt is getting out of control

Intitulés 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Etat 553,1 600,7 622,3 642,2 670,6 731,2 799,0Organismes divers d'administration centrale 57,3 56,1 51,4 51,7 49,2 45,1 56,3Administrations locales 106,2 106,7 105,9 105,7 105,8 105,0 105,3Administrations de sécurité sociale 25,0 13,7 12,5 12,5 13,1 16,2 31,4Total administrations publiques 741,6 777,3 792,1 812,1 838,7 897,5 992,1

En % du PIBEtat 44,2 46,0 45,9 45,2 45,4 47,9 51,3Organismes divers d'administration centrale 4,6 4,3 3,8 3,6 3,3 3,0 3,6Administrations locales 8,5 8,2 7,8 7,4 7,2 6,9 6,8Administrations de sécurité sociale 2,0 1,1 0,9 0,9 0,9 1,1 2,0Total administrations publiques 59,3 59,5 58,5 57,2 56,8 58,8 63,7

Mise à jour le 27 avril 2004

1.606a Dette publique au sens de Maastricht

Milliards d'euros et %

Source: INSEE, Comptes Nationaux

In fact, here there are too many numbers.Between 4 and 12 numbers only, would be better

The French debt is getting out of hand

1983 1993 2003

Debt 990 billion

% of GDP 25% 40% 67%

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