Finally, here is part two of my three-part series on how to give presentations that don’t suck. If you missed part one, you can always go back. If you’re still hungry for more information after you’ve read this article, be sure to check out Dazzle 'em with Style (thanks go to Marc for the heads up).

Surprise your audience

Most presentations are boring and people know that. So when you give a presentation, be aware that your audience will expect you to suck. The best way to overcome this expectation is to surprise people right at the beginning of your presentation. A normal presentation goes like this: you introduce yourself, you say a few words about the topic you’ve prepared and then you present your agenda. That’s what people expect you to do and that is exactly why you shouldn’t do it. Don’t introduce yourself, don’t talk about your topic and for the love of science don’t present your agenda. What you want to do is exactly the opposite of that. A very good way to start a presentation is to tell a story, to say something funny, to show your audience a picture or a cartoon, to ask an interesting question, maybe even to play a video or a piece of music. You can introduce yourself after that, but you really want to win points with your audience during those first few minutes. Agendas, now that’s a different story. I think they need to go and never come back. The problem with agendas is that they’re boring and that nobody can remember them anyway. I usually forget all about an agenda the moment the presenter switches to the next slide. But it’s not just that. Putting an agenda in front of your actual presentation is kinda like reading the table of contents of a novel before reading the novel itself. Sure, some people do it, but it’s pretty damn stupid. Your agenda essentially is the “plot” of your presentation and you most definitely don’t want to give that away up front.

Change your pace

I have a very short attention span, I admit it. I blame MTV and sugary beverages. The thing is: the damage is done and I don’t see how it can be un-done. So when I have to sit through a 90 minute presentation, I will get distracted. How much you suck determines how soon into the presentation that will happen. With the past couple of presentations I attended, it happened after about two minutes. I know that’s terrible, but it’s not all my fault. If those presentations didn’t suck as much as they did, I probably would’ve lasted a lot longer.
What’s to note here is that I’m not alone. A lot of people have a short attention span and as a presenter, you need to cater to those people. The trick is to change your pace every five minutes or so. I can take five minutes of “pure facts” but after that I’m in dire need of some comic relief. It’s kinda like in a good horror movie: you need the calm and quiet so the spooky stuff can work to its full potential. So after you give the facts, you might want to give a colorful example or ask the audience a question. Whenever you transition from one pace to another, you should also make your slides reflect that change either through a change in color or in overall design.

Less is more

When given the assignment to talk about a particular subject, most people feel compelled to cover that subject from every possible angle and in the greatest possible detail. Unfortunately, that’s a very bad approach to take. I’ve attended a couple of presentations lately, where the presenter would cover his or her topic from every angle imaginable. Now ask me how much I remember of these presentations. Go on, ask. Oh, I’m glad you asked! I remember absolutely nothing. That’s because at some point during those presentations my brain just shut off.
Here’s the problem: as you probably know, our short-term memory can retain about seven units of information. If you want to feed me more information than that and you want me to remember it, too, you better give me some time and some tools to help me internalize that stuff. What is much better though is to reduce your presentation to a maximum seven distinct talking points. But what if there’s more information that you need to get across? There are some tricks that help people to remember more than seven things. For example you can embed your information into a story, you can associate it with pictures, you can use repetition (talk about the same thing again and again), etc. Whatever you do though, don’t overdo it. If I can’t remember what you said, it’s as if you never said it.

Examples

By popular demand, here are a few more examples of presentations I enjoyed:

• Seth Godin - All Marketers are Liars: Note how he tells a story right after his introduction and how his first slide is kinda funny. Also note that none of his slides have more than three or four words on them.
• Dick Hardt - Identity 2.0: His presentation style is heavily inspired by Lawrence Lessig's (who I mentioned in the first article). I tried a similar style once and it does require that you memorize everything you want to say, but of course that gives you the benefit that you can speak very fluently.
• Matt Harding - How I got people to dance with me? Check out his slides. They don't look very professional, but they work really well. Also note that his slides switch automatically every 15 seconds which couldn't have worked without a good amount of preparation.
• You may also want to check out "Guy Kawasaki". A lot of people seem to like him and he probably is good, I just can't get over that fact that he's so in love with himself.

To be continued…