I gave a talk to the Product Managers of Product BC leading up to their yearly conference. By giving this talk, we were hoping to empower more people to apply to present at the conference.
Want the non 47 minute video version version…? Great, here are 7 common mistakes to watch out for when giving a presentation:
- There is no slide # cap
- School teaches us to hit a specific word count, that doesn’t apply here.
- I’ve seen someone show 350 slides in a 30 minute presentation (~11 slides/min) and it was one of the most engaging talks I’ve been to.
- 2-3 points/slide max
- Don’t stuff your slides with too much information. The more information on a slide, the less attention the audience is paying to the speaker.
- Some slides should be broken into multiple slides. Digital space is free and keeps people focused on the point you’re making at that moment. You don’t need information you shared 10 minutes ago still up on the screen (it’s distracting).
- Read each slide out loud
- This will help you gauge how much information you’re dumping on your audience. Do you have 10 slides that take 30 seconds to read each? Congrats, you’ve just spent 5 min of your presentation getting people to read (sometimes a good thing…sometimes not).
- This will also help you gauge how much time you should give them to read/process this new information vs. talking over them while they’re trying to read (no one loves that).
- No plan for questions
- Questions can make or break a presentation. Can you take interruptions on the fly? Do you prefer to do a Q/A at the end? Let your audience know what the plan is at the start.
- I like using Slido Live Q&A to allow the audience to submit questions throughout a talk and anyone can vote on what they want answered. By the end of a talk, I have a curated list of questions vs. rolling the dice on people putting up their hands or scrolling back in the Zoom chat to find who asked what.
- Trying to memorize
- I hate (/suck at) memorizing. I design my slides to be reminders of what I am supposed to talk about next, like cue cards. This helps me keep on track.
- People came to listen to you. If you’re going to read off a slide deck, your presentation could have been an email.
- Design for mobile
- You never know how people are going to be watching your talk these days so design for the smallest screen you use yourself. They might be watching on their phone while riding the bus. As an audience member, it sucks to have to squint/zoom in constantly.
- Also, you’re also never sure how big the screen is going to be that you’re presenting on. The more you design for mobile, the easier it is for the people in the back of the room to read your slides.
- Copying a big speaker
- Presenting is a very personal act. Copying someone else can be risky as people have a pretty good radar for if you’re not being genuinely you.
- How do you talk to your friends? What are you known best for at work in your interactions? You should leverage those elements for creating your speaker persona.
That’s the speed-run version of the talk. If you’re curious, you can get a copy of the slides here.