Presentation Length?

[Manoel]

Originally Posted by synth3tk

Also, any tips on what should or shouldn't go into the powerpoint?

Everyone who's attended a boring presentation (and yours certainly won't be one ) knows the importance of slide numbering. If you let people know you're boring them but it's already slide 20/23, you will be OK. It's just a nice thing to have on the corner of the slide to inform the audience their pain will be over soon - I find it to be a gentle move by the presenter, and I certainly appreciate a presentation with this.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Manoel

Everyone who's attended a boring presentation (and yours certainly won't be one ) knows the importance of slide numbering. If you let people know you're boring them but it's already slide 20/23, you will be OK. It's just a nice thing to have on the corner of the slide to inform the audience their pain will be over soon - I find it to be a gentle move by the presenter, and I certainly appreciate a presentation with this.

I hate to disagree with another's suggestion, but this seems to have the opposite effect on me. If a powerpoint is 23 slides...and I'm on slide 8, I'm thinking "how long is this going to go on for?"...and if I'm on slide 20, I'm thinking "yay, almost lunch time". Either way, the numbers tend to make me think more about the time that is passing rather then what is being said. I even get to the point of trying to use it to predict when the speech will be over.

Admittedly, I am terrible with powerpoint presentations. This is mainly due to the assumption many presenters make. A lot seem to think, "I've given you the bullet point and pictures, you should be interested by now". This isn't true. It is still VERY important how you say everything. You can take a perfect powerpoint and do horrible, if you do a poor job presenting it. And you can take a terrible powerpoint and do amazing if you do a great job presenting it.

The trick to Powerpoint presentations(as with all presentations) is in the way you present it. The substance of the speech is only second to the way it is being conveyed. Think of it as a delivery. The perfect gift is horrible if it gets broke in the mail. And if a lousy gift comes with lots of bubble wrap, it could still be awesome.

My points:

1. Try to remove all distractions. (sometimes you have to give them no choice but listen)
2. Don't assume people are interested.
3. A powerpoint is always as good or bad as the speaker.

[rsisk]

Want to see an amazing presentation, check out this one given by Falconmaster for an Ignite talk


http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=77687

[N7UJJ]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Want to see an amazing presentation, check out this one given by Falconmaster for an Ignite talk


http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=77687

You can see the one hour version that was presented a FermiLab a few years ago.

We found that videos are great in Powerpoint presentations

[synth3tk]

Hmm, the advice here to move towards MORE media in the presentation is contrary to some other people that helped me out. But at the same time, FIRST teams know more about what a FIRST team would need.

So, on to our photo gallery!

Also, for those of you who had multiple people perform the presentation, how did you organize that? Did you write down the key points on notecards and studied them (obviously not using them during the actual presentation)? How did you handle whose turn it is to speak? I'm assuming the entire presentation was segmented and delegated?

[rsisk]

I am working on a presentation for the Kiwanis for Wednesday right now. We have three presenters doing 5 minutes each on the following topics; First, the Team, the Competition. We are opening with the video that opened last years competition. After the presentation we will be demonstrating the robot.

Each presenter is putting together index cards with notes on their presentation. This weekend we will do a couple of dry runs to perfect the presentation and work on timing.

I'm attaching a link to the presentation in its current form, about 95% complete.

http://www.rsisk.com/kiwanis%20presentation%202009a.ppt

[Molten]

Originally Posted by synth3tk

Hmm, the advice here to move towards MORE media in the presentation is contrary to some other people that helped me out. But at the same time, FIRST teams know more about what a FIRST team would need.

The trick to media is balance. If used properly, pictures really enhance a presentation. But avoid having whole slides that are just pictures. This really detracts from it. Also, I find that you should always talk a minimum of 3X the amount of time they are watching a video. For instance, the animation that we are given at the beginning is a good video length. A match might be good. But together the presentation would become less personal.

[synth3tk]

Oh I didn't plan on replacing it all with pictures and videos. But my current revision has paragraphs of text, with few multimedia pieces. Just need to cut down the text to simple bullet points and maybe add a video.