This week I had the opportunity to read about effective presentation design. Most presentations I have attended involved the use of PowerPoint and an individual regurgitating the plethora of information listed in the bullet points. When this occurs my attention span is lost rather quickly. So, what is a good presentation? How can information be presented and still hold the attention of the audience? To answer these questions, I would like to discuss two presentations I recently attended that were well designed and really held my attention. The characteristics the presentations contained were: humor, creativity, simplicity, passion, personal connection to the audience, and use of technology in order to hold the attention of the audience.
Earlier this week, I was forced to go to mandatory training as part of staff education days. In the past these presentations have not been much to write home about so I did not have very high hopes as I arrived on campus. The two presentations that I was placed into were customer service and Microsoft One Note training. My expectation was that would need a strong cup of coffee that morning to keep from having a nice nap. As I was sitting in orientation I realized that there would also be a third presentation which related to safety preparedness regarding public mass violence. I have always had an interest in campus safety so this made me feel a little better about the morning. A video was shown that I had viewed in other mandatory meetings so, thinking it would be the same presentation I have sat in before, my little bit of excitement began to fade. Turns out I was wrong about the presentation to be given this morning.
The guest speaker was a 24 year veteran captain in the Daytona Beach Police Department and his presentation was simply amazing. He was able to hold everyone’s attention throughout the hour and fifteen minute speech. He was definitely passionate about the subject which made his approach to informing much more effective. He had several slides that contained stats or information but they were not the star of the show. It was evident that he was the star and the stats and info on the screen were just the costars. It also appeared that he cared about the safety of everyone in the room. He was not just going through the motions and delivering his speech which made it so much more enjoyable in my eyes.
He told personal stories which allowed us as an audience to relate to him. The stories were not glitter and rainbows but served the purpose of teaching us how to stay alive in a dangerous and life threatening situation. The topic of mass shootings such as Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, and Aurora, Colorado are not something that most people want to discuss, but the captain was able to stress the importance of knowing about these situations so that we can be prepared if this ever happens to us. He was not all doom and gloom and was able to work some humor into his approach. The video we watched had a scene with a lady cowering in the corner crying as the gunman was approaching the room in which she and her coworkers were hiding. He made a joke and said in that situation he would pick up the woman and beat the bad guy with her if it was able to save both their lives.
The one thing I will always remember from his presentation is the warning he heeded about preparedness. He said that unfortunately this will happen in our community and we just have to hope we are not present when it happens. If we are present we need to be prepared to do anything we can to get out of the situation alive. He asked us to promise him that we would try to survive because the police were coming and there would be a lot of them to help. I write this today with an extremely heavy heart because over the weekend a mass shooting tragedy did occur in our area and 49 individuals were not able to survive. It was very emotional to watch the news this weekend and this event made me hold what the captain said even closer to my heart. I have made a conscious effort to be aware and always have a survival plan everywhere I go just as he suggested.
The second presentation I would like to discuss was a TED talk by Hans Rosling (2013) named The best stats you’ve ever seen. This presentation contained statistics on childbirth, life expectancy, and average salary for various countries around the world. If you would have told me that was what the presentation was about before I began watching, I would have begun to glaze over before even pressing the play button. But even the name of the presentation had me intrigued. Like the captain, he was able to take a topic that could be considered unpleasant or boring and create a great presentation. The first thing I noticed was the way he used technology while presenting his statistics. These were not the usual PowerPoint slides I was used to seeing when stats were being presented. He was able to create dynamic tables and graphs that were constantly moving to as he spoke about how the numbers changed over the years. It was a very interesting take on how to present numbers and statistics. He was also able to add humor to the subject which made the audience laugh and hold their interest. Another thing that was obvious about this presentation was the passion and excitement coming from Hans as he spoke. He was energetic and lively which also kept the audience interested.
If I was asked a couple of weeks about my current thoughts on good presentation design I would have probably said anything that didn’t make me want to go to sleep, or anything that did not use PowerPoint as the resource. I still have negative feelings for PowerPoint but my answer would now be a presentation that contains passion, humor, excitement, creativity, and a use of technology to present the stats.
Reference
Rosling, H. (2013). The best stats you’ve ever seen [TEDGlobal]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usdJgEwMinM
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