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The worst presentation ever
By Terry Freedman
Created on Thu, 21 Sep 2006, 13:19

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This is an updated version of an article I posted on the Technology and Learning website recently.

Read it and then why not take a moment to complete the poll at the end?

I recently found myself in the worst presentation I have ever attended, and that is saying something. If only there had been a set of PowerPoint slides.... Here is a primer in how not to give a presentation to an audience of professionals. What lessons are there for our students?

OK, let's be fair. The quality of a presentation is often as much a reflection of the person doing the evaluating as of the presenter. Indeed, last year someone commented about one of my own presentations, "I can think of better things to do on a Saturday morning." Hurtful, but since another person attending the same talk said "Great presentation. I got loads of ideas to try out from that." I wasn't completely devastated. But the one I'm about to tell you about -- well, I'd love to hear anyone argue that it was not objectively dreadful.

I have to say that someone, attempting to be kind, ventured the viewpoint that this guy didn't stand a chance because the previous speaker was absolutely brilliant. Well, that doesn't wash with me. But I'll try and describe as honestly as I can what happened, and you can try and draw your own conclusions as best you can.

Firstly, dress. Call me old-fashioned, but when 150 people turn up on a Saturday morning dressed like they're going to spend a day in the office, the least a presenter can do is adopt a similar dress code.

Actually, the key here, I think, is empathy with one's audience, and fitting in. As a general rule, a male presenter can never go wrong if he sports a jacket and tie: the tie can come off and, if necessary, so can the jacket. But to turn up wearing a short-sleeved open-necked shirt with no jacket and no tie is, quite frankly, insulting in my book.

But that could have been overlooked had it not been for what followed. As I remember it, the next sentence he uttered was "I don't have a PowerPoint." Now, that could either mean his presentation is usually so dynamic that he doesn't need to rely on a prop; or it could mean that he doesn't know how to prepare a PowerPoint presentation; or it could mean that he couldn't be bothered. I can assure you, it was definitely not the first of these possibilities, unless he happens to suffer from a serious psychotic delusional illness, or that we happened to have him on a bad day.

The next thing he said was "I haven't looked at the conference programme." And then he managed to establish that the audience was of a completely different composition, in terms of profession, that he had assumed.

Amongst all the floundering, and hesitation that followed (did he actually have ay notes? It certainly didn't seem so.), he threw out various sets of facts which seemed to bear no obvious relation to each other or the theme of the conference, accidentally knocked the microphone every couple of minutes, told us repeatedly that he didn't have time to go into more detail, and assured us that such-and-such is a real issue that we need to engage with, without ever explaining how to do so.

The final low point was the end of his presentation, when he said something along the lines of, "I'm sorry I didn't have time to go into as much detail as I'd have liked, but it wasn't entirely my fault." So exactly whose fault was it, I wonder?

The presentation was so awful that I have even considered asking for both a partial refund, which I believe I'd be entitled to under the UK's Trades Description Act, and compensation for my valuable time -- I, too, can think of better ways of spending my Saturday morning.

But what can we learn from this, and how might students benefit from the circumstances I've described? Here's what I suggest:

1. Know thy audience. Find out who they are likely to be, how they are likely to dress, what they are likely to know, and what they are likely to not know.

As an adjunct to this, I would also add the point, made by David Jakes (he has a blog too), that presenters should adapt their presentation to their audience. It is actually quite insulting to have a presenter race through a whole load of slides saying "I'll skip that one, I'll skip that one...". Even if you haven't got the time, or can't be bothered, to customise your presentation, at the very least you could hide the irrelevant slides, surely?

If you think about it, students are expected to be able to differentiate their work for different audiences, so why can't you?

2. Prepare your presentation. The best off-the-cuff speakers are either professional speakers, or they have rehearsed being spontaneous. Knowing your subject isn't enough: there is an art to, and a science of, preparing a talk, and just coming along thinking you can "wing it" is likely to end in tears (the audience's, most likely).

3. Use appropriate technology appropriately. It isn't meritworthy to not use PowerPoint just for the sake of not using PowerPoint, just as there is no merit in using it because it happens to be there. In the situation I have just recounted, a few PowerPoint slides to look at would have come as a blessed relief. It would have distracted us from the collective embarrassment we seemed to share for a start.

4. If you're going to address a conference, it might not be a bad idea to have a look at the programme -- if only to find out what it is you're expected to talk about. But if, for reasons best known to yourself, you decide not to look at the programme, my advice is don't announce that fact to the audience, unless you wish to alienate its members as quickly as you can.

5. When you raise points, especially when your talk is outside the audience's usual frame of reference, explain why those points are relevant. That may be obvious to you, but it isn't obvious to them.

6. If you think an issue needs addressing, it's pointless just saying so. You need to say why, and also how we can address it, even if all you do is suggest a website to look at. I, for example, just to take something which I don't think the speaker mentioned but which he may have done whilst I was checking my email and sending text messages (my way of voting with my feet without actually moving from my seat), don't know how to address the problem of teenage pregnancy. It's no good telling me that it's an issue I need to address, because I don't know why I need to address it and in any case I don't know how.

7. Whatever happens during your presentation, you're the one responsible. This lesson was brought home to me when I was training to be a schools inspector. In one lesson I observed, there was building work going on outside, and the layout of the room and its acoustics were pretty awful. Consequently, or so I thought, the pupils were not exactly models of good behaviour and so they learnt very little. I said to my tutor that I felt sorry for the teacher because of the circumstances beyond her control, and was rounded upon. As far as my tutor was concerned, the teacher should have adapted to the circumstances. She was the one (at least nominally) in charge of the lesson, so if the lesson was poor and the children learnt very little, it was he fault. He was, of course, absolutely right.

Whilst we're on the subject...

I've written about presentations from a slightly different point of view on one of my other blogs. Also, I was recently contacted by the Times Educational Supplement for the Naace view about death by PowerPoint.

OK, now for the poll:

csPoller

Presentations
How good are the presentation skills of the people who speak at events you attend?

1) How would you rate the overall standard of presentations?

2) In your experience is PowerPoint (or similar)...

3) How would you rate presenters' use of PowerPoint?
Hey, buster: I already learnt how to read
Too many bullet points
Poor colour scheme
Too many illustrations
Not enough illustrations
Too many effects

4) Would you like to add any more comments?

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

� Terry Freedman Thu, 21 Sep 2006

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