This blog is about presentations & public speaking - how to make 'em, how not to make 'em and how other people are making 'em. Feel free to read, use and comment on what you find here. And good luck with your presentations...
Carts and horses.
I spend a lot of my time on other people’s forums, offering help and advice where I can. (So give a saint-hood!). One of the most common please I find is the “I’ve got to do a presentation on X: how do I make it interesting?”. As soon as anyone asks them anything about X they don’t know - they’ve done the typical but tedious thing and hit the panic button….
Here’s the advice I just gave one such student who wanted to know how to make a presentation on the health system of some country….
I know it’s easy to do, but try not to worry about the presentation. The presentation is only a means, not an end in itself. The end is for people to know about your subject matter - that means you need to do the research first. Your prof only gave you the assignment to get you to do the work! 
Once you’ve done the research the way of getting your audience involved (good idea, by the way!) should stand out. If it doesn’t, do some more research!
S
Remember - the presentation is about getting the message over. For heaven’s sake, be sure of your message before anything else - otherwise you end up with no substance and run the risk of no presentation either. Can’t get any worse than that, can it!?
How not to powerpoint
Genius - one of the best four minutes of your life if you want to think about using PowerPoint: visit Youtube.
Google presents …
With nary a fanfare (as far as noticed, at least) Google have added another string to their online office’s bow. Presenter. Some of you will have - no doubt - heard of, or even been using Google Docs for creating share-able documents and spreadsheets. If not, have a play - think of the options as an online version of “word-lite” and “Excel-lite”.
I’ve had only the briefest of plays with the presenter software - and you can see my prototype presentation here - I’ll make it prettier when I’ve got more time but it’s enough for you to get the idea, I hope.
So what’s it like? Well, to be fair, this isn’t technology to set the world on fire but it’s never-the-less got pretty much everything you’d need to write yourself a (basic) presentation.
You can change font and insert images in an obvious and intuitive way and - as is obvious because you can read it - you can publish online. And that’s where I think it’s going to have its main use: if you’re thinking of using it to use in the same way as you’d use PowerPoint, OpenOffice or Keynote you’ll find it not as fully featured. (There’s also the risk that your net connection will go down when you’re presentation is on! Murphy’s Law should never be underestimated. )
This “simplicity” is it’s basic weakness, because as soon as you start to use this program for creating something online, it isn’t long before you realise that you can get all the sophisticated transitions and animations of PowerPoint online, simply by creating a PowerPoint deck, exporting it and uploading the resulting file to your website.
Google is also (AFAIK) unable to cope with sound - and if you’re going to create something online these days that might be a critical weakness: it depends on what you’re after, I suppose.
Does Google’s offer have any advantages then? Sure. The interface is more friendly than PowerPoint - or at least more intuitive for me. It’s also free - a big plus. And of course there’s the added advantage that because you can’t do flashy things with it, you can’t be tempted to waste your time and your audience’s attention by trying to do flashy things! Self discipline imposed from the outside… Sharing also looks pretty simple and effective.
It’s certainly something I’m going to keep an eye on with a view to using when I’m away from my office PC at the very least. Perhaps a more common use will eventually turn out to be for giving online presentations, with this as a way of showing slides while the presenter does the verbal stuff.
Party season is over…
That’s the political party’s annual conferences, of course.
Inevitably, the media has been looking closely at the speeches made by the various party leaders. Accoring to The Telegraph, Cameron’s much touted “without notes” speech for the Conservatives was only a last minute descision. It’s been referred to as “unscripted” in various places too - which is patently rubbish! Just watch the video and tell me if, for one moment, you think that was a genuinely impromptu speech! Just because the script’s not on an autocue, doesn’t mean it isn’t there!
I do this kind of thing for a living and I doubt I could have given that speech without some serious (and I mean serious) preparation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not critisising him for what he did, far from it, just pointing out it’s not (quite) as advertised!
It’s worth taking a look at the audience reactions too. For my money, the outbreaks of applause at various ‘claptraps’ were too slow off the mark to be genuine and organic; it looks to me as though there was a sense, amongst the audience, of “We’re supposed to clap now, so we’d better”. I’m not the only one who was underwhealmed, either!
Mind you, towards the end (which isn’t the best place for it, perhaps), he finally got some personal stories going.
I’ve not had time to look back at Gordon Brown’s speech yet, but I will….
