Good presentations

This summer I tried to explain how to recognize a good conference, and obviously much of an event’s success rests on the speakers shoulders. So what is a good presentation? Ray Poynter explored this question in a survey titled Analysis of Presenting (free pdf here).

The survey indicates that the focus of any presentation is the audience, but the respondents think that presenters sometimes think it is the presenter or the data which is the focus.

Since audiences differ, there can be no single best method/style of presenting. Many of the requests from respondents are contradictory, i.e. you can’t please all of the people, all of the time.

Audiences expect presenters to be confident, capable, and rehearsed. There is little tolerance these days for a presenter who turns up and simply delivers the content in a clear but unengaged way [...]

Audiences are to some extent conflicted in that they want both more and less. They want to understand the message, they want the experience to be pleasant, but they want it doing in less time. In order for this to happen, they want presenters to be better. They want better preparation, better decisions about what to present and what to leave out, better slides, and better presenting skills.

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