Jeffrey L. Cohen

Recently I was part of a client pitch. I handled the social media portion for an old school, B2B industrial firm. Before I share what I talked about, I want to describe my presentation experience. Six different people from our team would be sharing the presenting responsibilities. We practiced beforehand standing at a podium at one end of a conference room table. This was a very comfortable way for me to present. When we arrived at the client’s site, due to technical difficulties that I didn’t fully understand, we presented from a laptop in the middle of the table, rather than at the podium. This now meant our presentations would be given while sitting at the table. After my first segment was done sitting at the table, I decided that did not work for me. It was conversational and informal by just turning to look at the clients at the other end of table, but it was a bit too confined for me.

When I talk about social media, especially to people who are just starting to wrap their heads around it, I tend to get excited. I speak with my hands. I also needed to point to the slide on the screen just a little bit. I decided that I would stand at the end of the table. I waved my arms. I walked back and forth while I made eye contact with our prospective clients. I spoke about our social media plans with passion. I had a few notecards with some bullet points on them. I didn’t look at them, but just waved them around. 

With kind permission: 

http://socialmediab2b.com/2009/10/my-recent-social-media-b2b-pitch-talking-points/

Last month Kjetil and I where speakers at the MSDN Live tour in Norway. We held presentations in Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim and Oslo. After this tour I learned something about doing a technical presentation for developers. I want to share my experience from this tour. I have gathered nine points with experience:

1) Use a lot of code in the presentation. We did a big mistake in the first presentation in Stavanger. We didn’t show much code. I guess when a developer goes to a event like this, (s)he wants to see code, preferably live code in Visual Studio. We increased our ratings when we added more code to the second presentation in Bergen.

2) Know the stuff your presenting so well that you are dreaming about it! Developers want to be impressed when going to a presentation. There is no room for errors!

3) Use pictures and make the slides sexy. Design sells, just ask Apple. Spend some time to polish the slides. Use pictures to underline what you are talking about. You probably know the old saying; “Pictures tells more than thousand words”.

4) Don’t use too many slides. People may go into a “PowerPoint coma” and you don’t want that.

5) Show that you are enthusiastic about the stuff you are presenting. There is nothing more inspiring than to watch a person that is enthusiastic about the stuff (s)he is presenting. It rubs of to the audience.

6) Talk about something you have worked with. The audience will more likely believe in what you are saying if you talk about something you have worked with and have real life experience with.

7) Think twice before doing a presentation together with another person. You would probably think that being two persons working on the presentation will make the preparation go faster. Well it won’t. It’s much harder to be two persons working on a presentation. It’s a lot of decisions to be made and it’s easier to argue with yourself than another person. Create the presentation on your own, and then get feedback from other people, but don’t trust every advice you get. Be critical because it’s you who know the thing you're presenting best. The great thing about doing a presentation together with another person is that you are not alone on the stage and feel safer. We managed to get a good interaction on stage, which the audience appreciated.

8) People may leave and not pay attention during your presentation.  Don’t let things like this interfere with your presentation. I have experienced people having a conversation during a presentation I did and it’s quite annoying. It can throw you a bit off so be mentally prepared for this.

9) Make the audience laugh. Most technical presentations are boring by default. Do something to entertain the audience, but don’t make yourself look stupid. Don’t make fun of the thing you are presenting.

With kind permission: 

http://blog.fossmo.net/post/Doing-a-technical-presentation-for-developers.aspx