In the first blog post from the series I shared with you some of the fundamental things that you need to consider when you are preparing and delivering a presentation. If you still haven’t read that blog post – now is the perfect time! Don’t start directly here, because as I already mentioned, 99% of the presentations today fail because of one or more things from our “step 1” post were not considered, so it’s indeed really, really important and you just have to go through it! In this one though I want to focus more on the specifics of a technical presentation and what you need to think about before and during its delivery! 

As in the previous post(which was highly rated by many people – here and here), we will start from the preparation phase and slowly move to the moment in which you are already in front of your audience! So where this actually starts?

1. Prepare an abstract for your session! – Most of the time you are about to deliver a technical presentation, you will be asked to write an abstract for it. This piece of text is actually the one and only thing that will “tell” people whether or not they will go for your session! So yeah, it’s an important one and because I don’t think I will be able to write a better post with better recommendations on this, I will just point you to my 2 favourite ones – here and here. Consider them as a must read!

2. Prepare your system/s! – The goal of this point is for you to make your demos as clear and simple as possible for your audience! This also means that you have to prepare your machines(be that virtual or not) so that there are no distractions what so ever during your demonstrations(of course there are exceptions to that rule)! I am sick of seeing presentations that for one reason or another end up with screensaver which just started or Skype messages that were just received! So, next time you present think about these:

• Disable your Screensaver
• Disable your Power Saving options and always run in High Performance mode
• Disable Windows Update
• Disable your Antivirus software
• Do not even think of enabling the option “Pointer Trails” for your Mouse! (who said to the presenters on TechEd 2010 that this is cool?)
• Close all unneeded software
• Clear your internet browsing history
• Remove all unneeded icons from the notification area
• Remove all unneeded icons from your desktop
• Remove any highly personal desktop wallpapers and put the most simple possible – for example a one colour wallpaper (even better if you have more than 1 machine – set different colours of your desktop on all machines. This way it is even more easy for your audience to see where exactly are you at the moment)
• Install all needed software – the one that will help you deploy VMs, the one that will help you with the zoom(all good presenters use software to zoom what they present! You should too!)
• If you are showing command line/PowerShell scripts – change the colour of the text to green, set the font to at least 14pt. and do make the console bigger!
• If you are showing code in any IDE, make sure it’s at least 14pt and also configure the colour for the marked code to something that can be easily seen. Most of the times in the SQL Server world we use yellow or orange and not blue for the marked piece of code inside SQL Server Management Studio.

3. Prepare your demos! – this step is crucial! If you skip this one, the chances you are going to fail in an epic manner are dramatically higher! What I mean is that whenever you are supposed to do a demo in your session you have to think of what is going to happen if it fails(and it will sooner or later!). Many of the presenters nowadays seem like they don’t care enough and they forget(or don’t even know) that there is something that can be done for their “failing demos”. Here are just 2 options:

• do screenshots of your actual demo
• record a video of your demo

Of course the second point is better and of course they both take time to be done, but, hey, that’s the prize you’ll have to pay if you don’t want to lose any credibility in your audience! It’s as simple as that and what makes me sad is that I continue to see presenters that think that it’s OK for their demo to fail – no it’s not! Not in 2014…

4. Try to go to the place where you are about to delivery your presentation! – If you have this chance – take it! Check the following things:

• The projector – cables used to connect(VGA, DVI, HDMI), brightness, contrast, position of the projector itself compared to where the screen is and where you are going to be standing out delivering the session, resolution(both when you switch in and out of the slides and your demos), etc.
• When testing the resolution, go at the back of the room and check whether or not the audience is able to see everything on your slide and during your demo without them actually needing to make additional effort
• Ask for someone to tell you whether or not you can be easily heard in every point of the room
• Check the speed of the internet connection(if you will need it)

5. Before the session starts, don’t forget to:

• Start all software that you will need including your demo machines
• Connect your mouse
• Connect the wireless remote control device

6. Respect the community! – In the technical communities it is very often that a presenter uses some piece of code or demo of his colleague and if you also do so, do not forget to thank him publicly and during your presentation about this!

7. Demo time! – Before you start the demo, tell your audience briefly what they are about to see and then show it to them! If something happens and your demo fail, start by excusing and then try to fix it, but do not use more than 1 – 2 minutes for this!(I have seen presenters using their whole session for that – this was the most epic fail I have ever seen and again – it was on a huge conference!). That is why you have the videos recorded and the screenshots also taken!

8. Q&A! – in my first blog from the series, I already discussed many important things related to the Q&A section of a presentation. However, tech presentations are a bit different and that’s true because you can deliver one in various formats – standard live presentation, webcast, podcast (yeah, you do not have slides there, but who said you need them in order to deliver an amazing talk?), etc. What’s more – many of the tech speakers nowadays are very active bloggers and if you are still not, it’s probably the perfect time to start your blogging adventure! Your blog can be the perfect place for you to follow up with the questions you were not able to answer and also upload your slide deck.

These were the 8 points I thought would be helpful to you if you are about to deliver a technical presentation. Of course these will not help you at all if you haven’t managed to “implement” the ones that we spoke about in part 1, so again – go there first! The last post of the series is entirely dedicated to presentation design or how should we actually make our slide deck in order for our audience to not die during our session. I think that will be interesting for you (you don’t want them to be bored to death, right), so stay tuned, because “step 3” is coming soon!

Being a good presenter is an important thing nowadays! Here are just 3 reasons why that’s true:

1. Presentations are now part of our daily job (want it or not)! In many, many of the organisations I know, people are now presenting to their teammates in one way or another. This means that if you want to be good at your job, you need to be able to deliver a good presentation.
2. The level of the expectations of your audience is nowadays higher than ever! Today each one of us has seen at least one great presentation – be that a fantastic TED talk, a technical session from TechEd (and I am not saying that the presentations there are all good! Some of them are actually really bad!) or just one of the presentations of Steve Jobs. As a result, every single time someone is attending your presentation, he/she expects at least as good presentation as the one that they have already seen and if you can’t deliver it – bad for you.
3. Every single time you present in front of an audience you represent yourself! Nowadays, everyone is a brand and if you do not care what is people’s opinion about you, then you have a problem and it’s a serious one. 

Convinced that presentation skills are important? I hope so, because if those 3 are not enough, I would strongly recommend you take some break, breath some fresh air and reread them again!

Now, let’s face it – I do a lot of presentations and trainings! I teach students and external companies, I lead many of the internal trainings for our team, I am a frequent speaker at the local user group, SQLSaturdays, I do participate in podcasts, webcasts and I’m the lead of the SQL Hangouts! I am not just someone that has read a lot of books on how to deliver good presentations(even though I had), I have actually done them and I have first-hand experience with various formats of presentations! (even today while I am writing this, I have just ended my preparation for a training on presentation skills for managers that I will be leading tomorrow morning!) And because I love sharing my knowledge and helping others (have led trainings on Presentation Skills/Design countless times), I decided I will do a series of 3 blog posts related to how to deliver better presentations! Here is how we are going to do that:

Step 1: Fundamentals of a good presentation
Step 2: Tips and tricks for technical presentations 
Step 3: Fundamentals of presentation design

So if that is the plan, let’s start with Step 1: Fundamentals of a good presentation!

Before we actually go to the real stuff, I want you to understand something that’s quite important and it’s the following:

There will always be someone that will either think that you, your slide deck or your delivery is not good enough!

Please understand, however, that this is not something that you should worry about that much, because even the best speakers have the same “problem”! Take a look at any of the keynotes Steve Jobs delivered and carefully watch his audience – are all of them constantly listening him? I don’t think so! The question is can we make those people less and if yes, then how? This is exactly what I want to help you with, so let’s start!

1. What’s your goal? – One of the most important things for delivering an amazing presentation lays in the answer of the question: “What do you want to accomplish?” or “What is your goal with this presentation?”! If you haven’t figured that out, stop immediately and answer to yourself first! It makes a ton of difference when you know what you want to leave your audience with and this “knowledge” will be extremely helpful to you when the moment to build your story, slides, demos, etc comes!
2. Who is your audience? – Once you are aware of what the goal of your presentation is, think about who is going to be your audience? That’s very, very important, because if you know that, you now know how to talk to them, what words and  acronyms you can use, what jokes you can tell, etc. Of course, because that’s not always possible you can either ask the organiser of the event or at least try to guess! The final goal of this exercise is for you to prepare and build your presentation and materials in a way that will be “suitable” for your audience! Remember – your presentation is for them and not for you and it is your responsibility to find the proper way to deliver your message!
3. Prepare! – You know what you want to accomplish and who are the people that will be there. Now is the perfect time for you to start preparing your story, materials, demos, tools, technology, etc. As a rule of thumb prepare more information than needed and then prioritise and remove the not so important one(however, if there’s time left at the end, you can give them this additional info thus bringing even more value to them and showing that you respect their time). Try to also think of questions that may be asked and always prepare to support your words with examples. That’s one of the best ways to “illustrate” your point! Do not also forget to save all of your materials for the presentation to at least 2 places – HDD, USB Flash Drive, SkyDrive, it’s up to you! And of course – buy a wireless presenter and make sure you have spare batteries for it. Here are just 2 of the devices that I would recommend – here and here.
4. Have a structure! – Tell your audience what you are going to talk about -> talk about it and then tell them what you have just talked about! Many of the presentations nowadays have an agenda slide and the reason for this is hidden in the above sentence! You want your audience to know how your presentation is structured, because not only it will be easier for them to keep up with it, but because this shows them that you respect their time – sometimes people want to hear just part of your presentation and it would be great if you let them somehow know when is the part they want to hear. In the mean time they can, for example, finish other project, attend another session or make an important call and that’s important!
5. PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE! (please…i’m tired of this!) –
   You know the goal, you know who’s your audience, you have prepared the materials, now practice! And no – practising does not mean going through the slides and just thinking of what you are going to tell on slide 5 and what demo needs to go after slide 13! Practicing means delivering the presentation as you are going to deliver it in front of the audience! Period! Rehearse at least 3 times and you will see the difference it makes!
6. Watch the clock! – Practicing is very helpful for one more thing – timing! Respect people’s time as this is the most important asset we have! By just taking a quick look at what’s the time before you start rehearsing your presentation, you will know how much it will take for you to deliver it. I personally always leave 10 – 15 extra minutes for Q&A and technical problems, so if my sessions needs to be 1 hour, I set the goal to prepare and rehearse the presentation for 45 – 50 minutes. Better finish your session 10 minutes earlier than 10 minutes later. People hate when they cannot leave in time and the reason for this is simple – we are all really busy nowadays and we all have quite a lot of things to do after your presentation ends!
7. Stage fright kicks in! – Once you are ready with the previous six points, the time for you to deliver your session comes! Now, however, stage fright kicks in, but that is something that believe it or not is normal. You have a problem if you don’t have a stage fright and not if you are faced with it! What you can do about it though is something that I personally call “shatter the fear”. Many people say to me: “I am scared”, but that is not something that will help you at moment like this! Ask yourself what exactly are your scared of – you think you are not dressed well – then ask your family what you should wear, you think that your demo will fail – then rehears it 5 more times and prepare for a disaster too (will talk more about it in the last post of the series). By “shattering the fear” you will be able to eliminate many of the things that are actually “scaring” you and thus you will help yourself get in front of the audience more confident and prepared!
8. Once you hit the stage don’t forget – you … are … the … emotion! – This means that if you sound boring, your audience will also be bored! Remember – it is you that will “dictate” what and how the room feels, so be emotional and let them all see that you love and you are passionate about the topic you talk about.
9. Start strong! – Many people will advice you – start with a joke, make your audience laugh! I say – do not do that! How are you going to be sure that your joke will “work”? I have seen many of those attempts fail miserably and that’s why I always suggest starting with a personal story, because everyone has them! Another common(and fatal) mistake I see very often(and I mean really, really often!) is that presenters start their presentations by excusing themselves for something – not enough time to prepare, not enough time to sleep, they are not sure whether or not the topic is cool enough, etc. Are you serious? Never ever start your presentation this way! If you do that, the expectations of your audience will drop significantly and now they think that they will not hear anything interesting or anything that is well-prepared. Guess whether or not they want to listen to you anymore? Huge, huge mistake, so please – never start with an excuse of any type! Always start strong!
10. Tell them “why” before telling them “how”! – Stress why is the thing that you are going to talk about so important? Tell your audience what the problem is and why do they need to care about it? Tell them why they should listen to this presentation and then tell them why you and not someone else is going to talk about it? Assure them that you are the right person that they should listen to! Once you do that tell them how are you going to resolve the problem that you just presented to them. “Why” before “how”!
11. Follow your structure, be extremely precise and confident in what you talk about! – In the preparation phase you created a structure of your presentation(story). Now is the moment for you to follow it and while you are doing that try to speak as clear and precise as possible! What’s more – your audience has to see that you are confident in what you are talking about! The best presenters I have seen possess these 2 – they are not only looking confident with their knowledge, but they speak so clearly that you have no chance, but to understand them no matter how complex the subject is! Strive for that! Rehears and practice with the thought of that! It makes a difference and you can easily see it when you compare a novice speaker with someone that is on the top of it’s game!
12. Who’s your audience? – While you are delivering the presentation we need to go back and speak for your audience again! This time you need to consider it not because you want to know how and what words and jokes to use, but how to involve it in your presentation. Are you going to ask questions? Are you going to give prizes? Are you going to do a demo that needs their help in some way? Engage them, because this will help you hold their attention during the presentation and you want that!
13. Nonverbal communication – another very important and at the same time hard thing for you to learn, practice and think of while you are presenting is the nonverbal communication – how you move, how you standing, what are your hands doing during your presentation, etc. Obviously I cannot show you what I mean, but here are two great resources on this topic – here and here. Watch them, learn from them, apply them to your presentations (and not only), because the only thing that nonverbal communication does is to strengthens the delivery of your presentation!
14. Q&A – first of all, don’t forget to repeat the question you are asked for the whole audience to hear! That is your responsibility especially in a large room and especially if there are no additional microphones set(not to mention if your presentations is broadcasted – than it’s a must!). Many speakers also think that they should be able to answer to each and every question that is asked by the audience, but that’s not true either. There is no problem for you to tell that you don’t know the answer of the question you are being asked. However, what you can do and what not that many presenters do, is to follow up in some way – try to help by asking for an e-mail and checking later or ask the person to discuss the topic after the presentation, or even sit down with him and test whatever he asked for(especially true in technical presentations). I have done all of those and will continue to do so, because believe it or not – it matters! And it matters in a huge way!
15. At the end, don’t forget to engage your audience once again by giving them something to do after your presentation ends. Many times you see presenters leaving a slide with resources or sending something to the attendees via e-mail – this is because the presenter wants the audience to stay involved in the topic of his presentation even after it’s end. You need to do that too and depending on the topic it is up to you to decide what are the resources that you will provide them and how.
16. Ask for the negative feedback! – once your presentation is over, it will be great if you can find people that are willing(because not all of them will do that) to give you the negative feedback, meaning what they did not like in your presentation. Always, always, always ask for it and even more important – learn from it, because this is the only way you will get better in your delivery! I promise you!

These are just some of the important, but indeed fundamental things that you need to consider and work on when you are about to deliver a presentation(have you noticed that they are ordered – from preparing to delivery?). There are, of course, a lot more things that may be added here(for example how one should be dressed?), but again – I wanted to share you the really important ones! Many of the presentations I see fail miserably exactly because of one or more of those above haven’t been taken into account and I really, really hope this post was and will be of great help to you!

In the second one from the series we will take a look at some very important things which you need to consider when you are delivering a technical presentation – what do you need to know about it and why it is different from any other type of presentation. You will also learn how to prepare your machine/s, your demos and what tools you can use in order to guarantee and be sure that your session will rock!

Stay tuned!