This presentation is all about me - presentation skills part 1: Food for thought...

As content owner for some of the public facing events at Microsoft, I have the great honor to work with very respectful people in our industry, and big names that drive a significant amount of attendance to their sessions at events.
I also have the great honor to review session content, and presentations prior to events, going through hundreds and hundreds of slides.

The quality of those presentations has significantly improved over the past couple of years, but very frequently it's the eye for detail, the final touch of presentation and a solid delivery that make a huge difference in session feedback and scores.

And if there is something that most presenters care about, it is how great their scores are, because if they wouldn't you should wonder what they would be doing in front of the audience anyways.

That's right, this blog might be a little spiced up and salted, maybe a little peppered up too.

In this first part on presentation skills, I wanted to tackle the "Contact Slide", "About Me", "About the Presenter", "Who Ami" slide that some presenters have in their presentations.

 

And there is a simple set of rules you can maintain when you think about building your presentations:

 

1. PowerPoint is not a Word Processor, you can actually use graphics or images to bring a better message

2. The audience is typically there for the content, on which you are a subject matter expert

3. A simple contact slide is sufficient, you don't gain ANY credibility by putting in a detailed about me slide

4. A session breakout presentation is not a "market yourself and put in some promo slides" presentation

5. Stick to the basics, sell on knowledge, not on established or want to have established credibility

6. Keep it simple, if the attendee wants to find out more about you, in nowadays social media, he/she definitely will.

 

 

Now what would say more than a presentation, built to showcase on what we talk about, when referring to the overly self-centric, promotional, credibility gaining (or losing) "About me slide".

Attached is the slidedeck, also shared on slideshare -http://www.slideshare.net/dandyman72/food-for-thought-21303418

 

Now don't let this presentation derail or upset you, I gladly have an open discussion on this topic.

 

Food for thought.pptx