Presentation

Garr of Presentation Zen points us to a controversial article, and discusses what it means for his “Presentation Zen method”.
Presentation Zen

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Last week an article appearing in The Sydney Morning Herald entitled Researcher points finger at PowerPoint generated quite a stir.

The article highlighted findings by researchers from the University of New South Wales, including John Sweller who developed the Cognitive Load Theory back in the ’80s.

One of the findings mentioned in the article: it is more difficult to process information if it is coming at you both verbally and in written form at the same time.

Since people can not read and listen well at the same time, the reporter suggested, then this may mean “the death of the PowerPoint presentation.”

Should we be ditching these infamous presentation tools for something else? Are our brains not able to take in all this information at once? Should we go back to blackboards and whiteboards? Butchers paper?

Bert Decker has this to say…
Create Your Communications Experience: Controversial New PowerPoint Research

PowerPoint (or Keynote) is a great tool to AMPLIFY what we are saying, but not serve as our scripts, or substitute for our own communication experience when we are speaking.

What can we learn from this information? Slides full of text don’t work. Images, charts, graphs, and symbols do work.

Reinforce your spoken words with appropriate imagery or supporting visual information. And lay off on the bullet points.

If you need help with this, check out the two sites quoted above, Presentation Zen has many awesome examples of slides that are effective and have minimal text. If you’re looking for images to use, check out FlickrStorm. By using the advanced search option, you can search through creative commons licensed material, so it’s easy to ensure you are not breaching copyright.

How do you do powerpoint? Do you have to sit through boring hour long, bulletpoint presentations? Organize a presentation technique seminar for you company, get an expert in save the world from bad powerpoint!

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There are some great websites out three to help work out how to use blogs for business purposes. One of my favourites is eMoms at Home, down-to-earth chat and advice…

eMoms at Home — 6 Quick and Easy Ways to Increase Traffic and Blog Revenue:

I recently hired blogging extraordinaire Sarah Lewis to help me overhaul my blog. I’m quite clueless when it comes to CSS - and Sarah is both talented, fun to work with, and a dang cool lady. I should have my new template up and running by the end of February.

Because of this, I’ve been doing a little housekeeping around here.

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Although the work I’ve been doing is minor in the big picture of things, even small tweaks are making a big difference, so I wanted to share them with you. I was surprised at the time I put in (less than 2 hours on all of these combined) vs. the results, which were way more than I expected.

Simple changes like replacing a small feed icon with a large one, better placement of subscription information, a pages letting people know what subscription to a feed is… all pretty simple.

I think the honesty in her post shows that you don’t need to be an expert in all things web to do well at the blogging thing, you just need to know when you need a bit of help, and I guess, where to get it from.

eMoms has a good readership and subscriber base, so I’m glad to see that these small changes and tweaks have made fairly immediate difference. There are some simple ideas here that should be fairly easy to implement on most sites, have a read of the rest of the article here, and check out her archives for lots of other great articles.

Technorati : CSS, blog, blogging, changes, eMoms, honesty, revenue, simple, traffic

Who loves training? Who loves training other people?

In my last job I spent the final few weeks attempting to pass on much of my knowledge of the design software and methods we use onto several EITs, (junior engineers).  This had been slow coming, mainly due to job requirements, and timings with other commitments. But finally we got there.  The guys got in and learnt some of subdivision design in 12D software.

When organising technical training, not everyone picks up things at the same speed, or in the same ways.  Some people can pick up software quickly with a couiple of pointers and the help files, other people learn by asking questions, others learn primarily by observing. All people gain from parts of each type of learning, and that’s why when training its a good idea to try to incorporate each method.  But first things first… preparing.

The hardest part of the process is definitely preparing myself. The ability to spend time working through what needs to be taught, how many sessions it will take and how I’m going to get these guys up to a standard where they can run. 
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Roughly in accordance with the Manager Tools Training Method these are my steps:

Devise - Prepare your training, get all the material you are presenting and have any reference materials ready as well for questions or bonus time. Set the time and the place and make sure all the required equipment (computers, projectors etc) is available.
Describe the skill -  This always comes first, this is where I hand out my training notes, charts, council codes,
Demonstrate - I always try to show them the processes of design in this step.  This takes a lot of effort to separate out the describing and demonstrating of the process.
Dipstick - This is the bit I like most, where as the trainer I get to test or “dipstick” the performance of the junior engineers.
Debrief - Celebrate success or reschedule further training.

Some people are easy to train, others are tougher than pulling teeth, if you put the effort in up front and present the training program well, everyone is much more likely to walk out (1) having learnt something new and (2) with their sanity still intact. For further discussion on these ideas, check out the link above to the Manager Tools Podcast.

Technorati Tags: training, managers, engineers, management, software, technical, information

The Name Tag Guy is a marketing and business blogwriter that I’ve been watching for a few months now. Watch the video below to see what makes Scott unique…

About halfway through the interview Scott mentions ways that he motivates himself. He has a whiteboard with all sorts of quotes and ideas on it.

Technorati Tags: The Nametag Guy, YouTube, writing, marketing, business, book review, Scott Ginsberg, Hello, nametag,

Bad Powerpoint presentations annoy me. Do you get mildly annoyed when you sit though a presentation that could have been a handout?  Do you feel like getting violent when people read off the screen?

Check out this photo from this photo from Presentation Zen of one of those moment in progress.

If anything in this picture looks good, (except for the Mac if you are that way inclined), check out any of the posts at PZ for tips, you need them.

I don’t get to present as much as I’d like, but I sit though lots of patched together presentations.  This morning was an exception, the Newcastle Civil/Structural branch of the Institute of Engineers hosted a breakfast presentation by Peter Stewart who was Senior Project Engineer for the design and construction Alliance Poject of the Lawrence Hargrave Drive reconstruction south of Sydney. There were parts of his presentation that were not the greatest stylewise, but generally the content was clear, the images were useful and the text was kept to a minimum. His manner and content were engaging and pitched well to a predominately technical audience.  I’m sure this was a well practised talk on Innovation in Engineering with some case studies from his career, but it was refreshing to see an Engineer present with style!
Photo of Lawrence Hargrave Drive courtesy of the RTA.

Technorati Tags: presentation zen, powerpoint, presentation, business,