Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Part II of Presenting (Topic Ideas)

Where do you come up with topic ideas? For me I am always looking, reading articles or just seeing something that triggers an idea. I then take that basic idea and put it into a OneNote that I have where those ideas sit to see if they still ring true in the future. If I am still intrigued I then write up a teaser for that presentation that on the page has my picture and my bio. That goes out to the world to see if people are interested in hearing that presentation (Usually through industry events looking for speakers) Yep, I book presentations that are not written. Last part is putting together that presentation - that will be the next part of the series!

Sunday, January 15, 2023

Presentation Training

I have been doing some presentation training and sometimes you need to go back to the basics. I am going to do a several part series on this (My personal opinion on presenting) First you must be prepared with some basics. If you are presenting to a room. What are you connecting to. Do you have the adapaters> I have a presentation kit. All the HDMI to VGA, USBC, Display port and more. Amazon makes this easy to get the pile of adapters you might need. Next, have the laptop charged. But I always prefer to be plugged in. You never know if your intro presenter takes too long or if your battery isn't like it was from new. You also want to make sure you have power settings for never go to sleeep on PPT presentations (There is a profile for this) Do your Windows updates (I don't want to have the laptop off then when turning it on - it is applying updates) Then make sure you are on a clean boot! I want to reboot close to my presentation so there is no hanging gremlins. Shut off all your messaging apps (Many times I shut off wireless just to be sure) that way you are not getting notifications or people reading your messages when presenting! Then use your own clicker if you can. You can remember better what clicks forward and back, to black the screen and to have a laser pointer if you need one. Just trying to eliminate all the potential problems! Know your screen setup. If you have the "Preview" screen infront of you? Are you using your phone or tablet for notes? With the above, know if you are being recorded. The camera person usually tells you where you can go to (How far and such) Usually they have tape marking! Know if you are using a microphone, where you can go and how far. If you go infront of speakers it tends to feedback! Have your water so if you get a frog during presentation you can go to it! Control your intro (Make sure they know how to intro you (Or in my opinion, not) Take a lanyard off (If you have one) it can be a distraction, bang the mic or such. Again, eliminate the unknown. I prefer not to wear hard soled shoes. Depending on the stage, it can be like tap shoes! I am not a fan of external AV or if you are, make sure you can survive without it! I have seen speakers spend 10 minutes tring to get it going. Not worth the distraction and pain. Know what you are going to do if the answer is "Nothing is working" Be prepared to entertain either way. Assume when putting deck together that screen will be small so make fonts big! This is all BEFORE you present. Next I will dive into the actual building of a presentation.