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Preparing the Presentation

When you see an excellent 20-minute presentation, you are seeing only the last 20 minutes of a process that took many hours. Experts recommend devoting 20 to 60 minutes of preparation time for each minute of the finished presentation (Nienow, 2013). That means that the average 20-minute presentation might take more than 13 hours to prepare. Obviously, there are many variables, including your knowledge of the subject and your experience creating graphics and giving presentations on that subject. But the point is that good presentations don’t just happen.

As you start to prepare a presentation, think about ways to enlist others to help you prepare and deliver it. If possible, you should rehearse the presentation in front of others. You can also call on others to help you think about your audience and purpose, the organization of the information, the types of graphics to use, appropriate designs for slides, and so forth. The more extensively you work with other people as you plan, assemble, and rehearse, the more successful the presentation is likely to be.

Preparing an oral presentation requires five steps:

First, analyze your audience and purpose. Then determine how much information you can deliver in the allotted time.

Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose In planning an oral presentation, consider audience and purpose, just as you would in writing a document.

Your analysis of your audience and purpose will affect the content and the form of your presentation. For example, you might have to emphasize some aspects of your subject and ignore others altogether. Or you might have to arrange topics to accommodate an audience’s needs.

Budgeting Your Time At most professional meetings, each speaker is given a maximum time, such as 20 minutes. If the question-and-answer period is part of your allotted time, plan accordingly. Even for an informal presentation, you will probably have to work within an unstated time limit that you must determine from the speaking situation. If you take more than your time, eventually your listeners will resent you or simply stop paying attention.

For a 20-minute presentation, the time allotment shown in Table 21.1 is typical. For scripted presentations, most speakers need a little over a minute to deliver a double-spaced page of text effectively.

The speaking situation will help you decide how to organize and develop the information you will present.

Start by considering the organizational patterns used typically in technical communication. One of them might fit the speaking situation. For instance, if you are a quality-assurance engineer for a computer-chip manufacturer and must address your technical colleagues on why one of the company’s products is experiencing a higher-than-normal failure rate, think in terms of cause and effect: the high failure rate is the effect, but what is the cause? Or think in terms of problem-method-solution: the high failure rate is the problem; the research you conducted to determine its cause is the method; your recommended action is the solution. Of course, you can combine and adapt several organizational patterns.

As you create an effective organizational pattern for your presentation, note the kinds of information you will need for each section of the presentation. Some of this information will be data; some of it will be graphics that you can use in your presentation; some might be objects that you want to pass around in the audience.

Some presenters like to outline their presentations on paper or in a word-processing document. However, more and more, people are outlining with their presentation software.

As you organize your presentation, you will want to plan the introduction and the conclusion.

Planning the Introduction Like an introduction to a written document, an introduction to an oral presentation helps your audience understand what you are going to say, why you are going to say it, and how you are going to say it.

Planning the Conclusion Like all conclusions, a conclusion to an oral presentation reinforces what you have said and looks to the future.

Graphics clarify or highlight important ideas or facts. Statistical data, in particular, lend themselves to graphical presentation, as do abstract relationships and descriptions of equipment or processes. Researchers have known for decades that audiences remember information better if it is presented to them verbally and visually rather than only verbally (see, for instance, Fleming and Levie, 1978). Research reported by speaking coach Terry C. Smith (1991) indicates that presentations that include graphics are judged more professional, persuasive, and credible than those that do not. In addition, Smith notes, audiences remember the information better:

One other advantage of using presentation graphics is that the audience is not always looking at you. Giving the audience another visual focus can reduce your nervousness.

Most speakers use presentation software to develop graphics. By far the most-popular program is PowerPoint, but other programs are becoming popular as well. One that has gained a lot of attention is Prezi, which takes a different approach from PowerPoint. Whereas PowerPoint uses a linear organization—the speaker presents each slide in sequence—Prezi uses a network or web pattern of organization. Figure 21.1 shows an example of a Prezi slide.

The free version of Prezi is cloud-based; that is, you have to be connected to the Internet to use it. This feature means that you can deliver your Prezi presentation from any computer with an Internet connection, that your team members can collaborate from remote locations, and that your presentation is stored in the cloud. However, your presentation is visible to all who visit the Prezi site, so you should be sure that it contains no confidential information or information you do not wish to share with those beyond your original audience.

Although the speaker can present each slide in sequence using the arrows at the bottom of the screen, Prezi makes it simple for the speaker to create a new sequence each time he or she delivers the presentation or to come back to a particular slide or set of slides during the questionand- answer period.

When the speaker clicks on any object on this overview slide, the software zooms in to reveal more objects within or next to that object. After discussing an object, the speaker can zoom out to the overview or zoom in to another object.

This capability of Prezi not only makes it easy for the speaker to navigate within the presentation but also helps audience members remember the big picture because they see the overview graphic frequently as the speaker moves from point to point. Whereas PowerPoint is linear like a book—page 6 always precedes page 7—Prezi is more like a website in that the speaker can easily jump from one object to another.

Characteristics of an Effective Slide An effective presentation graphic has five characteristics:

When you use presentation software to create a set of graphics for a presentation, avoid the templates, many of which violate basic design principles. Instead, create a simple design. In PowerPoint, use the Slide Master feature. In Prezi, select “Start blank Prezi” on the “Choose your template” page.

Presentation software programs contain many fancy animation effects. For example, you can set the software so that when a new slide appears, it is accompanied by the sound of applause or of breaking glass, and the heading text spins around like a pinwheel. Do not use animation effects that are unrelated to your subject. They undercut your professionalism and quickly become tiresome.

However, one animation effect in PowerPoint, sometimes called appear and dim, is useful. When you create a bulleted list, you can set the software to show just the first bullet item and then make the next bullet item appear when you click the mouse. When you do so, the previous bullet item dims. This feature is useful because it focuses the audience’s attention on the bullet item you are discussing.

Regardless of whether you are using the appear-and-dim feature, set the software so that you use the mouse (or a colleague does) to advance from one graphic to the next. If you set the software so that the graphics advance automatically at a specified interval, such as 60 seconds, you will have to speed up or slow down your presentation to keep up with the graphics.

One more point: you cannot use copyrighted material—images, text, music, video, or other material—in your presentation without written permission to do so. (Your presentations in class, however, do not require permission because they are covered by the fair-use exemption.)

Graphics and the Speaking Situation To plan your graphics, analyze four aspects of the speaking situation:

Using Graphics To Signal the Organization of a Presentation Used effectively, graphics can help you communicate how your presentation is organized. For example, you can use the transition from one graphic to the next to indicate the transition from one point to the next. Figure 21.4 shows the slides for a presentation that accompanied the report in Chapter 18 on tablet computer use at Rawlings Regional Medical Center.

Figure 21.4 Sample PowerPoint Presentation

Presentation software allows you to create two other kinds of documents—speaking notes and handouts—that can enhance a presentation. Figure 21.5 shows a page of speaking notes. Figure 21.6 shows a page from a handout created from PowerPoint slides.

Delivering an oral presentation is more challenging than writing a document for two reasons:

Using language effectively helps you meet these two challenges.

Using Language To Signal Advance Organizers, Summaries, and Transitions Even if you use graphics effectively, listeners cannot “see” the organization of a presentation as well as readers can. For this reason, use language to alert your listeners to advance organizers, summaries, and transitions.

Using Memorable Language Effective presentations require memorable language.

A note about humor: only a few hundred people in the United States make a good living being funny. Don’t plan to tell a joke. If something happens during the presentation that provides an opening for a witty remark and you are good at making witty remarks, fine. But don’t prepare to be funny.

Even the most gifted speakers need to rehearse. It is a good idea to set aside enough time to rehearse your speech thoroughly.

Rehearsing the Extemporaneous Presentation Rehearse your extemporaneous presentation at least three times.

Rehearse again until you are satisfied with your presentation, but don’t try to memorize it.

Rehearsing the Scripted Presentation Rehearsing a scripted presentation is a combination of revising and editing the text and rehearsing your delivery. As you revise, read the script aloud to hear how it sounds. Once you think the presentation says what you want to say, try recording yourself with an audio or video recorder as you read. Revise the presentation until you are satisfied, and then rehearse in front of real people. Do not memorize the presentation. There is no need to; you will have your script in front of you on the podium.