Presentation
Principles
- A good talk can be delivered even without slides; a great slidedeck doesn’t necessarily make the talk great.
- one idea per slide
- use visuals (vs. texts) whenever possible
- keep texts minimal and big
- practice and iterate a lot so that you don’t need scripts and transitions are totally natural and logical
Tools
Desktop
Web
- https://github.com/gnab/remark
- http://bartaz.github.com/impress.js
- http://imakewebthings.com/deck.js
-
showoff - “ShowOff is a Sinatra web app that reads simple configuration files for a presentation. It is sort of like a Keynote web app engine - think S5 + Slidedown.”
- landslide - HTML5 slideshow with Markdown.
Books
- Even a Geek Can Speak - ISBN 0978577604
- 15 Minutes Including Q&A - ISBN 0978577620
Tips
- Don’t write a script (unless you have lots of time to practice & perfect it)
- Don’t look at slides (worst: reading slides). Make eye contacts with audience.
- Practice until you can talk fluently throughout the presentation without looking at slides.
- While practicing, go back, modify, and start from the beginning whenever you find something to change or have some idea. Don’t just rehearse to the end. Presentation is linear. It should be a narrative that flows naturally.
- Pay attention to the transitions. Every slide should follow naturally & logically from the previous one.
- Think about what kinds of questions that the audience will be asking at each point of the presentation. Ask them and answer them. The first question is: “why should I pay attention to your talk?”
- Slides are there to “help”.
- Prepare some jokes if you can.
- if you are going to show something, make sure that the audience can understand that.