I gave a presentation today and I think it was one of the worst I have ever given. This confuses me slightly, because I was talking about a subject I have talked about probably a hundred times over the last 3 -4 years. So I'm thinking about the best talks I've ever given, and the worst, and what the difference is between them.

Slide layout

I used to do the bullet point slide thing. I think that slides like this are boring to watch, although they leave behind a much richer record of the presentation, although this is not so important anymore with most conferences having videos. However, over the last year I have gradually decreased the amount of content on my slides. While this means that I'm much happier with the slides, it generally means that I find it harder to stay on subject exactly, and tend to wander a bit. While not so great to look at, I have to admit that the bullet point slides provide a much needed structure to the talk.

Subject matter

People say that you give better talks when you're familiar with your subject matter. This is certainly true, but it's probably a misnomer for me, because I don't actually tend to give talks about things that I'm not familiar with.

Familiarity with your audience

I used to be much more worried about giving presentations in front of people I knew. I remember one of the first talk I ever gave at a conference (LCA 2007), and I forbade anyone from Catalyst from attending. This is the opposite from how many people feel I think, which is interesting. It's because I generally feel that when I'm doing a presentation in front of people I know, I have much more to lose, if I do anything stupid. If I'm talking in a room of strangers, I can walk away at the end and never see them again.

Language of the audience

This is an interesting one. Something I really noticed today was that because I was giving a talk in English, in a room of people whose first language was either French or German, I was forcing myself to speak much slower than I normally would (even slower than I normally try to talk when presenting to native English speakers), and using different language than I normally would too. This is very problematic for me, because it means that my brain is much further ahead in the planning of what I'm going to say, than what is currently coming out of my mouth, which means I lose track of where I am.


I think the two most important things that I need to take away from this experience are the first and last. In a situation where there's a language barrier, either with me speaking in English, or if I eventually get proficient enough to speak in German, I really need to have a better structure than I have now. When speaking in faster English, to an audience I feel confident can follow along comfortably, I can freestyle much more and don't need prompting with bullet points. However, in a situation like today, I really need them.

I'm still determined not to put bullet points on my slides. So I think the best thing to do is prepare two sets of slides. One with what I want to say, in a structured fashion, and the other containing what I want to present, whether it's full page images, or single words on a screen, or whatever. This sounds like a lot more work, but it's actually not, because I need to go through the thought process of what to say for each slide when I'm preparing them either way.

At LCA this year, I was extremely impressed with all the keynotes - not just the content and styles of the presenters, but more importantly the slides. I gave a techtalk at Liip when I returned from New Zealand, "what I learned in New Zealand", trying to follow the same slide styles, and I was really happy with it. I did notice that at LCA, some (maybe all) of the keynoters had written speeches to go along with their slides, and were reading from them on stage. That seems like far too much work for me, partially because I do like the free speaking approach, so preparing a bullet point version seems like a happy middle ground.