Converia – Conference Management Software

Your Presentation: Guidelines & Tips

Three key points in advance:

1) Take your time to prepare and practice your presentation without any time pressure. Your reward will be an interested audience, valuable contacts, good ratings and, with some luck, even a Best Speaker Award. Below, you will find valuable recommendations and details for a successful presentation.

2) We don't accept sales or marketing slides, NO product presentations!

  • Share your expertise and experience!
  • Impress your audience with a presentation that is practice-oriented, descriptive and straightforward, delivering interesting findings, solutions, project experience, etc.
  • Products can serve as examples for the practical implementation of a solution but are only the means of demonstrating it.
  • If you wish to present yourself or your company, do so in short with one slide.

3) Upload of your presentation slides (PDF) by 18 November 24

We know that most speakers work on their presentation until the very last moment. Nevertheless, please upload a representative version (PDF file) of your presentation in your speaker account by 18 November. For internal quality assurance, we will verify whether it meets the technical and content-related requirements.

Please also remember to upload the final version (PDF) for interested attendees by 29 November.

Introduction and vita:

  • A moderator will lead up to the presentation and introduce both the presenter and the company (not in seminars).
  • This is only one reason why compact and explicit abstracts and vitas are essential.

Presentation title:

  • Does the title of your presentation match the content?
  • Does the title of your presentation correspond to the title of your paper in the proceedings?

Structure:

There are many ways of structuring your presentation, e.g.

  • classical: introduction, overview, main part, summary/conclusions, discussion
  • problem-solution approach: status quo, challenges, core question, solution approaches, core message
  • modern storytelling methods (e.g. Obama method/public narrative according to Marshall Ganz or the hero's journey)

Choose the method that you feel comfortable with.

Length of the presentation:

  • Max. 40 minutes including questions/discussion (pre-conference: 20 minutes)

Max. one slide per minute (rule of thumb for simple slide design):

  • Perform at least one test run of your presentation to review its length.
  • Pause between sentences and slides so that your audience can follow your presentation and/or take notes.
  • Tip: The audience often perceives the speed of the presentation faster than the speaker does.

More tips on how to give a professional talk:

Less is more:

  • Slides support your presentation best with key words, pictures or short sentences. Otherwise, the audience loses focus by reading the text on the slide. Or if  they listen to you, they can’t read the text.
  • It is easier for the audience to follow your presentation if the presentation language corresponds to the language of the slides (e.g. both in German or both in English).
  • Keep in mind that the conference proceedings will provide all details of your paper afterwards.
  • Several slides with a straightforward design are better than one complex slide.
  • Don’t use too many animated graphics.

Attract the attention of the audience:

  • Questions (“Who of you...?“, “What/how much do you think …?, “What would you do if ...?“, etc.)
  • References to current information (news from the technical press, statistics etc.)
  • Description of personal experience, typical situations or challenges (“Have you experienced this as well…?”, "Imagine …”)
  • Short experiments or tests performed together with the audience
  • Requisites to visualize the topic of your presentation

Wrap up the facts in stories and pictures:

  • Use real-life stories, concrete examples or your own experience to back up your statements; tell the inside story.
  • Make use of expressive analogies or comparisons (may also be funny/witty).
  • Short demonstrations bring your topics to life.
  • Focus on the essentials and leave out the irrelevant.
  • Offer advice, recommendations, estimations, prognoses.
  • Explain important principles and coherences.
  • Make statements on advantages and disadvantages, cost and benefit, chances and risks.
  • Provide the audience with checklists and overviews.

Stand out:

Find a way to be noticed among the all the presentations. Professional slides and interesting topics are a good starting point - but it takes more to be remembered.

  • Stage your topic as drama, thriller, detective story, comedy, science fiction, etc.
  • Get the attention of the audience through tasks and questions that the audience associates with your topic.
  • Activate your audience with questions, short exercises and games.
  • Be humorous – but stay focused and serious.
  • Have a dialog, interview or discussion with another person (customer, skeptic, expert, …) about your topic.
  • Ask the attendees to exchange opinions about the topic.
  • Give the attendees tasks to solve individually or in teams.
  • Offer interesting, useful and innovative information, solutions or items for the attendees to take home.
  • Perform demos that the attendees can try out themselves after the presentation.
  • Use different media, such as a flipchart, pinboard, videos, etc.
  • Depending on your talent, try out different communication formats, such as acting, music, magic tricks, acrobatics, …

Pictures/visual aids:

  • Make sure that your pictures document the content and support your statements.
  • Schematics, tables, diagrams, sketches, photos, etc. are worth a thousand words. However, focus on the basics and facts that the audience can comprehend immediately.
  • Verify that the font used in pictures (e.g. screenshots) is readable. If the text is not required to understand the presentation, make sure to let the audience know.
  • Design your pictures such that you don’t need a (laser) pointer.
  • Don’t use too many animated graphics. A few cartoons are nice, however, they should be in clear reference to the content.
  • Make sure not to violate any copyright.
  • When talking about a subject that doesn't require a slide for visualization, insert a black slide. This way, you avoid having to deal with the remote control of the beamer.

Summary:

  • Provide a short and catchy summary of only the key messages, findings or requests.
  • Pause for a moment before launching the discussion or question phase to achieve the desired effect.

Equally important:

  • Hold your presentation as if you were telling an exciting story to each individual listener.
  • Speak with the audience, not to the audience.
  • Don’t look at your slides, look at the audience instead and keep eye contact.
  • If you need the slides for orientation, use the notebook screen. Don’t turn away from the audience.
  • After each slide change, take a close look at the slide before you start speaking. Take a short pause before proceeding to the next slide so that the audience can follow your thoughts.
  • Speak from memory and use simple sentences. Remember that this presentation might be the first time the audience gets in touch with your topic.
  • Avoid abbreviations, specific terminology and foreign words unless you can be sure that everyone knows and understands them.
  • Text that is not readable or presented without explanation might provoke distrust or dissatisfaction among the audience (subconsciously).

Good luck!

Contact for Questions on Presentations

Martina Hafner
martina.hafner@magenta.de
+49 (0) 151 46 73 33 34