Four tips from five-minute presentations

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Networking events which group together a number of short presentations are creating a buzz.

There’s Pecha Kucha Night, which started out to allow young designers to showcase their work:

Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each - giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

There’s Ignite which has more of a geek flavour:

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?

and in Wellington, New Zealand we have 7×7:

It’s an ideas forum and networking evening where seven speakers have seven minutes to present an insight into their work and their vision for New Zealand.

7×7 was originally inspired by TED, the grandaddy of them all:

The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.

What does the popularity of these formats tell us about presenting?

1. Short presentations can effectively cover big ideas.
2. A short presentation is often better than a longer one.
3. Audiences like short presentations (if it’s boring or if the topic isn’t of any interest to you, it’s not going to go one for too long).
4. Audiences like variety.

Why is a short presentation better than a longer one?

More thought has been put into it. That’s because the presenter has been forced to:

1. Think hard about the main thing they want to get across to the audience in that short amount of time. So a short presentation is more likely to have a clear focus.
2. Narrow the scope and/or the depth of what they present. They know they can’t cover everything there is too know about their topic. So they’re less likely to overwhelm the audience with information.
3. Plan what they want to say - rather than just talking to a few bullet-points scribbled on the back of an envelope - because they don’t have the luxury of rambling on till they get to the point.
4. Edit. Editing improves the presentation.

For all these reasons, preparing a short presentation often takes longer than preparing a long one. And that work pays off. So even when you’re giving a longer presentation, start preparing as if you were making a five minute presentation:

• make sure you’ve got a clear focus,
• plan what you want to say,
• narrow the scope/depth, and
• edit.

Your presentation will be the better for it.

Go well with your next presentation. If you found this post useful, subscribe to my RSS feed.

Content is King

TED is an annual conference held in Monterey, California featuring presentations from the world’s leading thinkers and doers. Each speaker has 18 minutes to make their point. TED puts videos of the speakers on their website - this is an amazing treasure trove of material for observing and learning from great presenters. Garr Reynolds from the Presentation Zen blog has done a great job in highlighting some of the great speeches from TED and offering his comments. His comments generally focus on these areas:

1. The visual content of the presentation eg: slides, props
2. The delivery style of the presenter
3. The substance of the content.

My approach will be to analyse the process of the content. What I mean by the process of the content is such things as:

1. The key message of the presentation
2. The structure of the presentation
3. The examples and analogies used to support the presentation.

My aim in this analysis is to see what we can learn from TED speakers about planning the content of a business presentation. In a business presentation I believe Content is King. The audience is there for your content - what you have to say. At the beginning of our courses, we reinforce this by explaining the five domains of presenting (content, visuals, confidence, delivery and audience management). We then ask the participants:

“If you are going to a business presentation, as an audience member, which of these five is the most important to you?”

Most will answer that they are there primarily for the content - information of value what they will get from the presentation. You may not deliver it very well, you may be nervous and have no visual aids - but if you have good content you will still have a presentation that people will get value from.  This is an empowering concept for people starting out in their presentation careers. Andrew Abela on his Extreme Presentation blog and Tom Antion on his Great Public Speaking blog have both also discussed the primacy of content. Of course, if you also have great visuals and an engaging delivery style that’s great - but by themselves these things are not sufficient to make a great presentation.

That’s why my focus in analysing TED presentations will be the process of the content.

Go well with your next presentation. If you found this post useful, subscribe to my RSS feed.