SlideMagic Blog

What do you do when your presentation gets interrupted by a question from the audience and you were planning to answer the point a few slides down? Answering it will disrupt your carefully designed story flow. Not answering it might upset the audience. My suggested approach differs by presentation setting.

• For huge audiences (a big TED talk for example), you are unlikely to be interrupted.
• For slightly smaller audiences, you can say that people should hold of questions until the end of the presentation. After that, only hacklers can still decide to interrupt you.
• If you get a question in a presentation for a big group of people, I would answer it really briefly (yes, good point, we do have a blue colour option) and say that you will get to it in more detail later on, look a way from the asker to stop the dialogue.
• In smaller meetings, you can sometimes completely go off script and let the audience guide your presentation. A good example would be a pitch to partners in a VC firm, where they read the material beforehand and have a number of very specific questions they want to see answered. Being stubborn here and sticking to your script will upset the meeting.
• In one on one meetings you need to read the body language of the person sitting in front of you. When someone keeps on asking what it is that your product actually does, it is better to kill off the issue rather than have the person sitting and guessing with a frown on her face until you get to the right point in your presentation. A person who is guessing, is not listening to what you say.

They are different. The audience will put more value on:

• Entertainment value (“stunning” slides, unusual props, presentation style)
• Emotional connection to your business idea (not-for-profit ideas do well)
• Emotional connection to the speaker (is she sympathetic, an underdog taking on big bad forces in the world)
• Whether they actually remember you after a long morning of pitches (most of the audience will not take notes)

The professional audience will put more value on the business potential of your idea.

Focus on the objective: winning the pitch competition, which is different than receiving a cheque.

Art: Jean-Léon Gérôme, Police Verso, 1872

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Presentations have become incredibly important in business:

• It is harder to stand out to sell stuff. Fifty years ago, people would buy products from local, familiar suppliers. Now companies buy from suppliers across the globe.
• The amount of new ideas is proliferating. Fifty years ago, you learned how your industry works and then spent 40 years working in it. Now, technology and creatively linking multiple disciplines give an endless flow of new business concepts that need explaining.
• Good presenters get promoted in big corporates, good presenters manage to get funding fro their startups. Presenting is a key career skill.

Presentation design needs to be incorporated in the curriculum and include elements from traditional courses:

1. Art, drawing, photography, typography
2. Data visualisation (mathematics, economics, science)
3. Psychology
4. Literature, (story) writing
5. Computer skills
6. Acting

I can see that it is hard to implement drastic changes in the curriculum of schools. One solutions is to give students one big presentation project throughout the year, and have them work on it during lessons of existing classes (mathematics, economics, art, etc.).

I have worked with 15-16 year olds (as part of the MEET program here in Israel) and discovered that these kids - free of historical baggage of bullet points - are actually pretty good at designing bold visual slides. What needs work is the basics of pitching a business idea, and presentation delivery skills.

Art: Charles Hunt, Children acting the ‘Play Scene’ from “Hamlet,” Act II, Scene ii, 1863

Being an introvert and being afraid of public speaking are 2 different things.

Introverts find it hard to engage in small talk, introverts think before they speak, introverts do not enjoy loud crowds, let alone trying to make yourself heard in them.

But, introverts can be great public speakers. On stage, there is no small talk, but the real substance of your presentation. People are quiet and listening to you. The perfect spot for an introvert to shine.

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When you get a question during your presentation, should you abandon your story flow and answer it? It depends.

• For very large audiences, no. One person’s question does not merit throwing out your carefully crafted story line and potentially confuse the rest of the audience. Answer the question very briefly (“Good point, we use super glue for that, I will get back to it later in more detail”) and move on.
• For smaller audiences that have seen the material you are presenting before, probably yes. For example a presentation to the partner group of a venture capital firm.
• In one on one meetings: definitely yes. These meetings are not presentations, they are conversations and you should adjust the story flow based on questions, interruptions of the other person. If there are none, then follow the script, but that is likely going to be a boring meeting.

In my twenties I saw many examples around me that created presentation habits I had to unlearn. Professors at university putting a copy of a syllabus page on an overhead projector. Politicians waffling on TV. Senior student organisation leaders giving very poor speeches. Pompous Microsoft Word memos being printed out and distributed in every employee’s mailbox. Boring dinner speeches that everyone sat through politely and quietly.

The world is changing and younger generations have videos of TED talks, Steve Jobs product launches, and other presentations to set new reference points. Still it is worth making sure that you are not following bad habits of other people around you, because this is the way you are supposed to give a presentation.

I have now stopped dragging along a laptop to client meetings. The thing is (relatively) heavy, requires a bag, and being the guy with the lap top in a meeting always put you in an inferior social position somehow. The PowerPoint for iPad app has improved a lot. You no longer have to go through the tedious process of downloading a file from Dropbox, remembering your 365 password, uploading the file to the 365 cloud drive, and downloading the file again. Still potential font rendering issues (even with standard fonts that might drop to the next line), still makes me use the combination of PDF files and iBooks. It renders nicely and the iBooks folder/collection solution is good enough to keep things organised. A lighting-to-ancient-VGA-projector convertor enables you to present on a big screen.

And after that we come in with the usual “blah blah blah” pitch. I hear this often in briefing meetings.

1. You are offending your audience
2. You probably do not believe in your own story
3. You have become tired of given the same pitch all over again
4. You are probably winging the story, a true blah, blah, blah experience for your audience

Invent a fresh approach to telling your story, believe in it, and stand for it. No more blah, blah, blah in the story outline.

A few days ago I saw a National Park Ranger present in this setting below: 200+ getting and eating their lunch, continuing their conversation, while the ranger used a microphone to top the noise level of the crowd, reading from a piece of paper. A bit like Alaska salmon swimming up river, or the jazz band that is ignored in the background of a cocktail party.

A better approach: shorten the talk to focus it solely on the memorable facts: how big this National Park is, how powerful the 1964 earthquake/tsunami was and what permanent changes it made to the landscape. The philosophy behind the National Parks is less interesting for the hungry crowd.

Photo source: alaska.org

Fred Wilson can wing a presentation, scribble down 10 points, 10 minutes before going on stage, and delivering a great 10 minute presentation (see his blog post).

But is he really winging it? My guess is not. He has spoken about these issues dozens of time before, everything is completely prepared in his head. He just needs to decide what to talk about, and what not.

Fred cannot wing a presentation, neither can you.