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How to Survive and Succeed in a Presentation Marathon |
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Achieving success with a day-long (or longer) presentation can be a challenge, but is by no means an impossible feat. One big mistake presenters sometimes make is to think of it as merely an hour-long presentation modified to include 10 times the original amount of slides! This way of thinking almost always leads to hours of crushing boredom—on both sides of the podium.
The key to delivering content over the course of a day lies within your approach to the day itself. Start thinking of your day as “an event,” rather than as “a presentation,“ right from the outset. Use your presentation and slide deck as the foundation of the day’s curriculum, rather than its core. Mix up your delivery vehicles to keep your audience engaged and interacting with the content and each other. A few simple ways to do that include: |
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- Roundtable/Panel Discussions – A variety of voices keeps things interesting and offers unique perspectives. Recruit a group of expert coworkers to sit on a panel and banter for an hour or so about the aspects of any groundbreaking, distinctive, or controversial content you may be covering.
- Visual Presentations - At times that you are using PowerPoint presentations, give your audience something to look at other than bullet points. They don’t need to read what you are also telling them. Instead, give them visuals that supplement and reinforce your talking points. People mentally process images orders of magnitude faster than text and remember them considerably longer.
- Video Evidence - If you will be referencing customer success stories, sales wins, or other similar points, consider developing a few short video clips to embed in your presentations to showcase the information and provide an engaging way for your audience to see your words in action!
- Flash Demos - For discussions of the "how-tos" of products, solutions, or services, flash demos can simplify and provide visual manifestations of complex concepts--and leave you free to concentrate on delivering concise supporting information and answering questions.
- Lunchtime Breakout Sessions - Not all of the content you are presenting will be meaningful for every attendee. Give your audience the opportunity to “customize” their experience by offering lunchtime drilldowns into a number of key content areas that they might find most useful and informative.
- Multimedia vignettes - One approach to take during the day is to package your content into a story. You can embed multimedia, often times Flash, vignettes at strategic points throughout your PowerPoint presentations. The vignettes help bring the audience along with you and can help keep them engaged.
Presenting a full day of content doesn’t have to be a grueling endurance contest for you and your audience. Use your slides to “anchor” your presentation over the course of the day, and provide variety using any or all of the suggested elements above. Before you know it, you’ll be coming to the close of your day, thanking the attendees for coming, and receiving kudos from your manager on a job well done!
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