L. Eric Culverson - www.TheCompetenceMyth.net
This discussion series is an excerpt of my book: The Competence Myth - Why your technical skills are no longer enough and what you can do about it ( based on 7 Steps to an Awesome Technical Presentation)
Your first Step in creating an awesome technical presentation, is to Organize the material for maximum impact.
We do that in a couple of ways, the first is to start with the audience in mind. Why should they care? How does your content benefit them? You should always be asking yourself that question, because your audience will. They will sit there thinking, how does this benefit me, solve my problem, in some way enhance what I need to do. Organize your materials so the benefits, not the features is clear and unambiguous Strive to make the information as informative and enlightening as possible, without being authoritative or manipulative.
Also, consider this, you should always have a distinct call-to-action that motivates your listeners. Because if there is no action, and if nothing changes, what was the point of spending valuable time listening to you? So if you find yourself getting stuck when thinking about what the organization of your materials should look like, start with the end objective in mind. What do want people to do, or do differently as a result of your technical presentation, and once you’re clear on that, start working backwards, start building the case for why the audience should.
Well I thought we could get in the first three steps, but we gonna stop at this point, with the first two. See you next time when we cover the next few of the overall 7 steps to your awesome technical presentation.