Always do at least 1 full rehearsal with a timer, preferably two full rehearsals where the first one you do keep a timer but also have a notebook (physical) present to quickly write down adjustments you want to make.
Do a live demo, people love live demo's, but be prepared for when disaster strikes (it will), if possible run your live demo on a physical device with you during the presentation.
Most places allow you to have 2 devices connected, or quickly switch the HDMI cable to the demo machine.
Do not use a linux machine, I know this sounds harsh, but with all the types of beamers/screens out there, a windows or mac machine will just have a much higher success rate. (I learnt this the hard way, in the end I could choose between mirrored 640*480 or full hd on the beamer only, which makes live demos much harder).
Create short slides, the slides are there to guide you and the audience. Try to prevent reading the slides out loud.
Use images and videos, they can tell more then a thousand words.
I often use the STAR approach to tell my story, this helps structure your talk. You don't need to follow star exactly, but if trying to explain something, it often helps to first give a bit of background why you did what you did.
Make sure you let the audience know if and when you will be answering questions, some talks really benefit from interactivity, but if you are short on time, let people know they can ask their questions later (perhaps add a slide at the end with sources and your contact information).
Also, relax, the audience has already decided they want to listen to your presentation.
The do not use a Linux machine advice is funny. I have been using my Linux machine forever for presentations and only once I got an issue because I switched to KDE and forgot to have kscreen installed. Once in like 7 years. I see much more often people with Macs who cant project anything because they dont have the right adapter to begin with.
> I see much more often people with Macs who cant project anything because they dont have the right adapter to begin with.
Yes, as a regular Linux user I've never had major issues with presentations from Linux, but I've seen Mac users stumble many times for this exact reason.
If possible, have multiple output options built into your laptop. I have both HDMI and VGA on my current laptop and this has proved quite useful over the past few years.
> have both HDMI and VGA on my current laptop and this has proved quite useful over the past few years.
Agree. I have VGA and DP, and VGA is a life saver sometimes when you are at a venue that has only analog input. And frankly, VGA works very nicely for projecting static images anyway, which is what most presentations do.
It really depends on the topic of the talk. If it's something that can be demonstrated in a quick and straightforward way, do a demo by all means. But I've seen talks where people were forcing a demo into a talk about complicated concepts. There's little value in seeing someone type in a page of code, compile and run. Or seeing something run without understanding what is happening on screen. I would much rather have the speaker spend those minutes discussing the topic.
> Do not use a linux machine
Better advice: make sure you know how to setup an external screen on your laptop and how your presentation software works with it. Try it before hand with an old VGA monitor.
> Create short slides, the slides are there to guide you and the audience. Try to prevent reading the slides out loud.
I would argue that the slides are there for the audience. Ideally, you need to be able to present your talk without seeing your slides. They are not cue cards for the speaker.
Very short slides light on content (e.g. memes, one word or sentence per slide) make for a terrible tech talk in my opinion. Do make your slides informative. They should complement what you are talking about. Show a relevant graph, code snippet, etc. related to what you are talking about. If you can't do that, fall back to a summary of your spoken content in a 3-4 bullet points per slide.
I would argue that the slides are there for the audience. Ideally, you need to be able to present your talk without seeing your slides. They are not cue cards for the speaker.
I would argue the exact opposite. I think you should desire to be able to do your talk without seeing your slides, because the goal should be to do the talk without slides at all. You want the audience focused on you and what you're saying, IMO. Slides are a (sometimes) necessary evil just to help keep the talk on track.
Personally I disagree with this point and have developed a presentation style I'm happy with based on the slides being my cue cards (average 5-10 presentations / year for the last 15 years).
I do NOT read the talk from my slides and can't stand it when speakers do that! But, each slide should jog my memory of everything I need to say at that point. Maybe I'm talking about some stats as background, fine, the slide should be a bar chart of those stats, or a map, or an illustrative photo. Rarely a list of bullet points, though I don't prohibit them altogether and will tend to conclude with a list of bullets to leave in the background as a summary while I take questions. Overall the slides should complement the talk, not be a duplicate. But they serve a second function of reminding me of all the things I need to say.
As a programmer you will appreciate the reason for this: I have cut the number of entities I have to process in my head from three (slides, audience, notes) to two (slides, audience). Keeping track of and having rapport with the audience is essential to me, even if that just means looking at people to see how engaged they are. With notes/memory in the equation I used to get a lot more nervous and not pay enough attention to the audience. Cutting out the notes allows me to focus on communicating better. It's a shared context, the audience can see exactly[1] what I can see.
If you're in sales then I see another tactic used instead, which is to memorize the talk so thoroughly that you don't need notes or presenter view. Fair enough. I'm an academic researcher; while they say all our presentations are a sales pitch on some level or other they clearly aren't expected to be as slick as "sales" sales. My constraints are having limited time to prepare, and wanting to stay natural. I do rehearse but I don't over-rehearse as I find that kills my own interest in the talk as well as taking more time. Usually the minimum for me is two full run throughs, probably stopping the clock multiple times during each to apply edits as I see fit (hopefully only a few edits second time).
HANDLING CONTEXT SWITCHES
The one exception to [1] is context switches. As others have said, finding the perfect words for the introduction to each new topic really helps get the flow going. These can be remembered, written on notes, written on slides, written on slide notes visible in presenter view, whatever.
I'm a big fan of presenter view, not for notes, but purely for the ability to see the next slide and introduce it slightly before the change. It helps to leave each slide knowing what direction you're going in so you're not surprised by the next one. I do worry slightly that I'm dependent on presenter view and turn up early at each venue to make sure I can get it working (not all of them can).
NERVES
Someone said don't drink too much alcohol. Based on my experience as a performing musician this is true :) Same goes for caffeine for the opposite reason, it really heightens the nerves. On the subject of nerves, just accept that some talks seem to go better than others. If you find yourself having a failure of confidence, take a deep breath and keep going. Easier said than done I know, but it always feels worse on the inside than it really looks; I have had people come up to me after talks where I thought I did awfully and tell me how engaging they found it.
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
If you can find a way to further engage the audience without forcing it - quiz questions, polls etc - go for it. Quiz questions can help set context for a new topic. Despite my love of the material I've never really been a lover of talks and can get pretty bored in the audience, so I really appreciate this sort of thing.
Example: on a few of my talks lately I've showed a picture of some protestors up trees by a road, asking who can name the incident. (Protests vs Newbury bypass construction). Followed by more protestors and an airstrip (former US nuclear base Greenham Common). Most of my UK audiences will get these right. Finally I asked what links these two things. They may or may not get the latter: the success of commercial development on Greenham Common, when it ceased to operate as an airbase, was blamed for the failure of transport models to correctly predict the effect of Newbury bypass. Doesn't matter whether anyone guessed the final answer, which is obviously a bit specialist. The point is I've now got people thinking about the many interconnected elements of simulating transport which is a great intro to the topic.
> If you're in sales then I see another tactic used instead, which is to memorize the talk
Majority of my talks in the last years have been in academic settings, but I'm definitely on the side of "over-rehearsing" on your scale. I've never done a sales talk in my life.
I guess it depends on how well you can improvise on stage. I never managed to master that. For myself, I can only "stay natural" and not be nervous when I'm well prepared.
> quiz questions, polls
I personally don't like this when listening and rarely do it as a speaker. It can be a double-edged sword. I've often seen speakers fall into the trap of asking "how many of you are familiar with X", and then proceed to spend next 10 minutes explaining X even though it's obvious that the audience already knows X very well. If you're asking questions, you should be prepared to act on the answers.
Fair enough, there is diversity of preferences in both speakers and listeners :)
I agree on familiarity polls that you should adapt content based on audience familiarity with the topic.
Whether or not audience engagement is appropriate also depends a bit on the length of the talk. It can be great for a context switch in a 45 minute talk, like a mental reset button for the audience. If you only have 5 minutes it will detract from things unless you want it to be the main focus.
Much of the time, there's a machine already there ready to go. If that's the case, probably best to use it.
Seems to me that these days, the safest way to handle your slides is to have them on the web, with a backup on a USB drive. No need to worry about operating systems or video modes. The site's IT guys already did the work.
There are various shiny frameworks to do this (revealJS.com et al), but even PowerPoint presentations can be viewed in-browser, with OneDrive.
> prevent reading the slides out loud
Good advice.
> Use images and videos, they can tell more then a thousand words.
Indeed. This hints at another good 'rule': avoid wordy slides. Let your talk itself be the wordy bit. The slides just support.
> Also, relax, the audience has already decided they want to listen to your presentation.
One thing that tends to trip me up is people's different abilities to parse graphics and texts.
Physicists are so used to looking at plots most of us are really good at interpreting them. But this is a hard-earned skill. If I talk to the general public I have to take great care in keeping plots and graphics really really simple.
I hear the humanities have similar issues with text. So whatever your background is, tailor not just your content and language to the audience but the visual language as well.
So, if I understand gnur's meaning, you present a situation you were in, what task (or target) you were attempting to achieve, the actions you took, and the results.
"The website suddenly went down as traffic increased. I needed to find out which backend service was becoming overloaded and triggering the failure. I quickly deployed and configured WhizBangMicroservicesAnalyzer, and used it to assess the current status of our various backend microservices. It detected that our caching servers were running out of RAM due to a misconfiguration causing them to hit a corner case. I was able to fix the configuration error and bring the website back online."
>Always do at least 1 full rehearsal with a timer, preferably two full rehearsals where the first one you do keep a timer but also have a notebook (physical) present to quickly write down adjustments you want to make.
two are still too few IMO (I'm not a native speaker but still). I like to do at least ~5, where I can get a feel for the sentences I'll pick for transitions (like some sort of theater play) so should I get stuck somewhere I know how to transition to the next talking point/topic.
>Do not use a linux machine,
eh, my experience with linux machines was mostly positive, what I can recommend though is to have the slides ready (4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratio) in the cloud as a "safety net"
> Always do at least 1 full rehearsal with a timer, preferably two full rehearsals
Personally, for me to feel very comfortable in delivering the talk, I practice the whole presentation at least five, six times.
The first couple of those practice runs, I tend to adjust the slides and my talk, to iron out the wrinkles in either my slides, my words or the transitions/logic between the slides.
The latter practice runs are essentially to memorize the whole talk. I typically write out my whole speech in the speaker notes, but after two-three practice runs I don't need to look at them anymore.
The result is a presentation delivery that as an intronerd I'm very comfortable with -- even the jokes have been practiced and perfected -- and one that I could deliver practically verbatim the next day.
I have done a lot of presentations over the years, and to the best of my recollection, every single one has been done using a Linux machine, and this has mostly been a non issue.
I think a better adage might be "get there early so you have time to deal with technical issues, bring any potentially required adapters, and have your presentation on a thumb-drive in case you need to borrow someone else's machine to present in a pinch." I say, "on a thumb drive" as opposed to "in Dropbox" or whatever, because you may rarely find yourself in a position of not having net access in the location of the talk.
Do a live demo, people love live demo's, but be prepared for when disaster strikes (it will), if possible run your live demo on a physical device with you during the presentation.
Most places allow you to have 2 devices connected, or quickly switch the HDMI cable to the demo machine.
Do not use a linux machine, I know this sounds harsh, but with all the types of beamers/screens out there, a windows or mac machine will just have a much higher success rate. (I learnt this the hard way, in the end I could choose between mirrored 640*480 or full hd on the beamer only, which makes live demos much harder).
Create short slides, the slides are there to guide you and the audience. Try to prevent reading the slides out loud.
Use images and videos, they can tell more then a thousand words.
I often use the STAR approach to tell my story, this helps structure your talk. You don't need to follow star exactly, but if trying to explain something, it often helps to first give a bit of background why you did what you did.
Make sure you let the audience know if and when you will be answering questions, some talks really benefit from interactivity, but if you are short on time, let people know they can ask their questions later (perhaps add a slide at the end with sources and your contact information).
Also, relax, the audience has already decided they want to listen to your presentation.