I hold speakers to relatively high standards. They get paid to present to large groups because they're ostensibly good communicators. And I cannot believe the beginner mistakes some of the speakers are making here at VSLive.
Acronyms, buzzwords and elaborate use of langauge impresses people
That’s a whole seperate post. The acronymization of our industry is completely out of control.
Somethings up with the PNG slide image… its
just a big blur with Firefox 1.5
Intentional, because it’s a “copyrighted” slide from one of my… er… favorite presenters!
If you must do such a thing, just a quick outline at the beginning and a quick reminder at the end should really be sufficient.
Personally, I don’t think a 1:30 presentation needs an agenda, a TOC, or a summary at the end. Why not use that time for something actually useful, like actual content, or a QA period?
haha, seems like you are having fun? 
/Peter
ugh All those points bring back some bitter memories of time wasted.
One that summarised something that sticks in my craw (especially as an ex tech-support peon who often had to explain technical things to non-technical people):
16: Acronyms, buzzwords and elaborate use of langauge impresses people. Its important that people realise your obvious greatness, so use as many acronyms, buzzwords and suchlike as you can.
17: Be sure to speak in a careful monotone. Think of it as the vocal equivalent of the ‘poker face’; give nothing away.
You could probably do with a link to “Stop your presentation before it Kills again!”
a href="http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/06/kill_your_prese.html"http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/06/kill_your_prese.html/a
I hate it when people just read off the slides. Your presentation should include explainations of each bullet point, but not read off the bullet points themselves.
Moving through the bulletpoints wtih some graphical cue to let them know the title to the current explaination is a good idea to keep people focused.
Interesting bit of serendipity - this morning I got to witness a VERY well done presentation. The speaker kept the stupid jokes to a minimum. The power point slides were an explanatory aide, not to be read from, but to used to illustrate points in the talk. The handouts were not simply a collection of the powerpoint slides.
A demonstration of a web site was given (using a local set of static pages that look EXACTLY like the real deal) and the presenter was able to show us exactly how to use it in minimum time.
The presentation? The usual beginning of the year talk from our 401K provider (Fidelity, if you care). I can’t say as I’ve often seen a presentation so well put together and delivered.
So, Jeff, don’t give up hope. There are people in the world who know how to use PowerPoint properly.
it’s interesting that your numbers 2 and 10 could be read as arguing against the very commonly accepted guidelines of :
“tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them.”
if you just look at it on it’s face, it may sound like a lot of repetition, but i’ve found that the principal actually works very well in academic talks.
some of your critique may be fine and well for a non-academic talk, but for research issues which needs more structure than entertainment value, the idea of laying out a (brief) roadmap before a talk, and then recapping the “takehome points” can be the critical difference between giving a talk that can be absorbed and leaving someone with an un digestible collection of random facts.
oops, i see listless beat me to my main points (plus i mentioned points 2+10 when i meant points 2+8).
Somethings up with the PNG slide image… its just a big blur with Firefox 1.5
In defense of points 2 and 8, many presenters, and especially those not naturally possessed of an excess of natural public speaking talent, are often taught the “3 T’s” of presenting:
Tell 'em what you’re going to tell 'em.
Tell 'em.
Tell 'em what you told ‘em.
The idea is that repetition helps pound things into peoples’ heads, which is basically true; it takes 7 or so spoken repetitions of something before the average adult learner can be said to have actually /learned/ what you’re saying.
However, all that having been said, I don’t know that I’m necessarily a believer in this approach, common though it may be. Also, there’s no excuse to go laboriously over an excessively lengthy TOC and/or summary. If you must do such a thing, just a quick outline at the beginning and a quick reminder at the end should really be sufficient.
So are you watching the presenters closely to see if they surreptitiously start up a Camtasia or Flash movie when they give a demo?
Sometimes I wish more presenters would do that. I know what the compiler looks like, I’m familiar with compiler errors. I don’t need to see any during a presentation.
I have to agree with listless and mouser on points 2 and 8. I too was taught the 3 T’s, and have found it to work very well. Of course you shouldn’t exhaust the audience with an actual TOC - just clarify the subject of your presentation. As for the “closing arguments”, it should be no more than a few key things to remember about the subject (which you have already gone over in detail).
Come on! Tell us what you really think! 
just clarify the subject of your presentation
If the audience doesn’t know the subject of your presentation after sitting through the entire thing, isn’t it fair to say that your presentation is an utter and complete failure?
I’m not against a summary slide at the end to tie things up, but keep it brief, and move IMMEDIATELY to the QA. In fact, I’d say just display the summary slide, DON’T READ ANY OF IT, and start the QA session right there.
Presentations are about content, content, content. If your content is fun, and clear, believe me, you don’t need it bookended with tedious TOC and summary slides.
has the eeiry ring of every MS presentation I’ve ever been to… Say, you been seeing any MS presentations lately?
I think you and I are sharing brainwaves. I keep thinking about something and then you post about it - which means we’re thinking about it at around the same time!
Anyway - annoyed at horrible presentations, some of them my own, I started reading this book:
Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling your Story
In a nutshell, you better have a story and everything in your presentation should be a part of it. The book covers pretty much all the comments here plus a lot more. I love the “so what” test:
Go through your presentation with a friend. On every slide, and every bullet point, have them say “So What?” It’s makes you think of the audience and what each point is really about and WHO it is for. If you don’t have a damned good answer to “so what” then throw it the hell out.
Obviously you have one school of thought that others share, but not all. Being trained by the military on training and briefings, it really is (as mentioned above):
Tell 'em what you’re going to tell 'em.
Tell 'em.
Tell 'em what you told 'em.
Many of your points are spot on though. The biggie that I do not know how to respond to or have anaswer to is telling people who you are and what your background is. This establishes your credentials to be speaking on your topic. Is that wrong? I do not think so. Only once have I gotten a conference evaluation back saying that I “smacked of self-importance”.
The question I have for you is have you been up there doing the speaking? If not, walk a mile in their shoes and step up to the plate!
Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling your Story
I have this book. I have yet to fully read it, but it comes highly recommended from a bunch of folks.
Being trained by the military on training and briefings
Not to be snarky, but should we be taking lessons on how to present from the military?
The biggie that I do not know how to respond to or have anaswer to is telling people who you are and what your background is
The quality of the content should speak for itself. If the content is good, those are all the credentials you need. Consider blogs. Do we background check the authors? Nope.
If not, walk a mile in their shoes and step up to the plate!
Absolutely true It’s coming. I have done one formal presentation; you can view the slide deck here:
It’s funny because it’s true. At least I’m a lot more confident with my own presentation style now I’ve been to VSLive. At least I can say that I suck as bad as some famous name speakers.