Lesson Learned on Presentations

Really, presentations are changing, and I should go with my instincts instead of caving to the norm.

Thanks, in part, to Elliot Masie's Learning [insert year here] conferences, I started appreciating presentations that have very few PowerPoint slides. Yet, I tried this at ASTD's TechKnowledge 2008 and it didn't work. It didn't work so much that before I presented a second session, I whipped up some slides. People appreciated the slides. I was baffled.

When I started offering, and presenting, a Web 2.0 course, it involved a lot of slides. I took a different approach to my slides, however, after being impressed by the slide style of Anders Gronstedt. I now use Creative-Commons-licensed images that cover the entire slide, with a small heading explaining the information. Most of the information comes from me, with the slide as an intensely visual guide. This method was a happy medium for me between almost no slides and depending slides. (With my Web 2.0 course, if given over 2 days instead of 4 hours, there is a lot less reliance on slides, and more on discussion, using and doing.)

I attempted to use my happy medium slide method the other night, with my LinkedIn/Facebook presentation. It didn't work out for me as well as I'd hoped. When discussing social networks, people have a lot of questions. Regardless of the fact that I'll be re-designing the presentation when Facebook redesigns it's profiles in a few weeks, I'll also have a different presentation tact. I'll start with the basics in the beginning of the presentation, then just go live to LinkedIn or whatever social network I'm discussing. At that point, I need to run an "unmeeting," going where the crowd takes me. Ironically, I'd originally wanted to do this and changed my mind and went with slides, based on my odd experience at TechKnowledge.

Aside from my TechKnowledge experience, the need for the "unmeeting" style is indicative of the subject matter, I think. People want to learn more, and they want to see it live, not just in a slide. If more presentations were run as "unmeetings," I think we'd all be a lot happier in attending them.