I don’t claim to be a presentation guru or the mr. know-it-all. But I did have some damn good presentations in my life, I took part in a few presentation-related courses, read some theory and I used to analyze the way others present ideas and track down the common mistakes that they make.

So what I would like to present here is a list of some most relevant presentation tips that I gathered from my own experience and a variety of other sources. This is not directly SOA-related stuff, but in any business or academic environment a good presenter is priceless. And we all agreed that our presentations last Saturday were not really top notch. So here it goes (and feel free to post your tips and tricks or links in the comments).

1. Prepare and be prepared. This is the rule #1. The public can tell a prepared presenter from a spontaneous speaker in a matter of seconds. And make sure you take into account all aspects of the presentation, including your clothing, appearance, technical means, backup plans in case something does not work, timing, ideas, etc. It’s best to start preparing presentations early ahead of deadline. This leaves more time to rehearse them, look at them with a fresh mind and iteratively perfect them. Start with general questions like “what ideas do I want to convey?” “who is the target audience?” “what is my goal?” Is it to sell something? To explain a concept? To entertain the public and keep them interested? After you know answers to these questions, lay out a plan of the ideas that you will be presenting. I usually use the outline view in Microsoft Word (some people don’t know it exists – try it out, a great feature) or I just open PowerPoint and create empty slides with just the titles.
   After you have the outline, start creating slides, demonstrations and notes. When deciding on the detailness of presentation, try to put yourself into the listeners shoes. What do I know as an observer? Am I familiar with this subject? Would I like someone to explain the basics of the subject or would I like to get the details right away?
   It’s also important and what point is your presentation during an event. People can handle boring presentations better in the morning. On the contrary – presentations after the lunchbreak should really be entertaining or you risk having a bunch of sleeping beauties in front of you
   In any case, never go on the stage unprepared. No, really, never.
2. Rehearse and watch your timing. When you have a presentation ready, just practice it out in an empty room. Do that no matter how odd this seems to you Imagine yourself in front of an audience, say what you want to say, click what you will be clicking. After you finish, check your watch. Did you fit in the time limit? Which part took too long? Did you like the way it all went? If not, modify the presentation and practice again.
3. A picture is worth a thousand words. This is a nice saying, but many many presenters underestimate its importance. I always get bored when someone starts their PowerPoint slide show which has nothing but many long statements prefixed with bullets and displayed on the screen. Some bullets disappear, other ones appear. BOOOORING. The presenter knows the subject/project/topic quite well, usually because he has worked in the field for quite some time. But the spectator might be completely unfamiliar. So use pictures. Use them instead of words or together to strengthen the ideas. For example, instead of having an item “Our product uses a very accurate timing scheme”, put a picture of a clock and say about timing with your voice. It will take a split-second for the audience to understand that you’re talking about time and make an association.
   Even if text is necessary, put picture next to it. This will strengthen the idea and will require less mental effort of the audience to understand the “big picture”.
   But make sure you find the right picture. Abstract, vivid and stylish pictures work best to symbolize a certain concept. Real photos are less appropriate. And even though standard clip art that comes with MS Office is better than nothing, try to avoid it if you want to be seen as professional
   Diagrams and schemes are extremely useful when displaying the structure of some concept or thing, flow of data, etc.
4. A video is worth a thousand pictures. This is just a continuation of the previous idea. It takes time and effort, but if the presentation is really important to you, try to make an animation instead of describing a certain algorithm in text. I love seeing animations of data packets traveling from one server to another and it makes it completely easy to understand what a person is talking about.
5. PowerPoint is good. Usually. Some general tips for PowerPoint presentations, which are almost always used during presentations:
   Don’t use default templates, everyone has them. If you don’t have a template that bears your company’s brand and color scheme or another appropriate one, use black on white. Or white on black. If other colors are used, make sure they contrast well or otherwise they might not be seen on projector screen.
   Don’t have too many slides. As a general rule of thumb,  5 is usually enough, 10 is more than enough and 20 is insane. Plan the number of slides so that it would take about 3 minutes to present a single slide.
   Don’t have too much text on a slide. Learn the text by heart and don’t use the slides as reminders of what to say. It’s best to have maximum 5-9 items of text on a slide. And have them short. Instead of writing “Our software is really fast compared to competitors”, write “High performance” and say the long sentence orally.
   Make the text items appear one by one right before you present them. If all items appear at once, the audience will start reading them all and won’t hear you elaborate on the first ones.
   Don’t use fancy transition effects unless you’re making a presentation at a kindergarten. Simple appearance with some subtle fades is usually the best choice.
6. Keep eye contact. Try to see the whole audience. Don’t focus on a single person, even if it’s Carmen Electra somewhere in the second row. Don’t look over people’s heads or at the ceiling. Look them in the eyes. If you have to look at the screen, do it briefly and then look at people while talking.
7. Watch your posture. Stand straight, keep your hands out of your pockets. Imagine James Bond if that helps you, that’s how you want to be seen. Cool, authoritative and totally in control. Your lower part of the body must not make any unnecessary movement. This is a sign of nervousness and insecurity. So don’t shift your weight from leg to leg, don’t shake your legs when sitting or walk in small steps back and forth. Your upper part of the body is much more free to do whatever it wants. Use hand gestures to create necessary emotions, but don’t bite your nails or scratch your ears.
8. Walk to keep attention. It is really advisory to walk around the stage when presenting. The walk should be slow and controlled, not frantic movement around. Come up to a certain sector of the audience and watch them while talking. This immediately wakes them up. Go up and down the aisle, if it’s a split layout of chairs. Go back to the stage. And always keep eye contact.
9. Use your voice powers. The voice is a really powerful instrument and must be used appropriately during presentations. If you have a weak voice, it’s not a problem. One of the ideas is to look at the back row of the audience and try speaking in such manner that they would hear you. Just tell yourself “I want them to hear me” and your voice will adjust subconciously. Generally try to be loud and clear. Speak slowly enough and articulate words. But the most important tool is your intonation. Try to vary the pitch of your voice from lowest to highest, depending on what you’re saying. Pause often and at unpredicted places. This creates anticipation and tension, which is what you want. Make your voice come from the deepest of your chest, resonate it. And no “emms, ahhs” or repeating annoying words, such as “kind of, like, well”, etc.
10. Dress appropriately. The audience must see you as an authority, not someone on the equal level to them. So as a rule, dress one step better than the audience does. If it’s an informal meeting, put on a shirt and leave your shorts at home. If everyone will be wearing shirts, put on a tie and possibly a suit. If everyone will be wearing suits, make sure yours is not from Maxima and has matching colours and a matching tie. As for the colours, black subconciously makes a person seen as an authority. Lighter colours make you seen as more friendly, simple, down-to-earth guy. If several people will be presenting different parts of the same presentation, make sure they are dressed matchingly.
11. Involve the audience. Make them participate in the presentation. Rhethorical questions are good, but polls are better. For example, ask “how many of you have ever done that?” and raise your hand to show that they’re supposed to do the same. Try to use these questions not only in the beginning or end. And pick questions in a way that many people could answer them without being afraid that it’s too personal.
12. User humor (if you can). If you are able to make an audience laugh (when needed, not when you fart accidentally or your software crashes), you’ll have them love you and not want to sleep at all. Use jokes sparingly and make sure these are tested jokes and will work. Don’t make fun of any social groups that could be present in the audience. It is better to not joke at all than to say a joke and be the only one who’s laughing.
13. Don’t be worried. For some people speacking in front of an audience is an intimidating and scary experience by itself and as soon as they go up on stage, they forget all the tips and tricks. Well, practicing is the best remedy and not much to add here (imagining everyone naked will not probably be too helpful). But when you go on the stage, remember – the audience always wants you to succeed. When people come to an event, they don’t want to be taking part in some kind of failure. They dedicated their time to the show and they want it to be the best it can be. So always have this in mind and make it a good show for them, they’ll love it.
14. Use plenty of examples. Don’t speak only in abstract terms. Add examples to support your ideas. And pick the right examples while preparing. After saying “It’s really important for people to take responsibility for their actions” say “For example, imagine a situation, where you go to a person X and he does Y to you. Would it be right for X to do Z instead? etc.” Don’t be afraid to repeat something you have already said. Say that in other words. Those who missed it the first time will understand it.
15. Maintain the context. When watching a presentation, I always like to put its ideas into a “big picture”. So especially if there are many slides, I like to know which part of the big picture we are discussing. For example, if you are discussing a concept that consists of 4 components, each of which is covered by 2 slides, I would love to see somewhere at the top of the slide the name of the component that we are discussing. Or alternatively, the presenter could say something like ”we have already discussed components 1 and 2, they form the basis of the product and as for the component 3, the main idea is this”.
16. Pay special attention to group presentations. When there are several presenters in the same presentation, a rehearsal is absolutely necessary. Divide everything in such a way that switches between people would be minimal. Don’t interrupt each other as this is a sign of unpreparedness and lack of a single point of view. Dress uniformly and make sure both presenters are worth each other, otherwise the bad presenter will look even worse and the good one will look as someone who chose a loser as a partner.

So, pick the tips that you want to apply in your presentations, see what works for you, watch others present and make notes of what you liked and what you would have done differently. Good luck to everyone in their future presentations – the audience wants you to succeed ;)

Ugnius Keturka

Or not.

At least in some cases most of the buisiness use-cases .

Why? I’ll tell (or rather write) you why… Maby I’m pesimistic, but yet, its my view and thank God im not in Russia so I can elaborate on this topic.

The idea struck me after reading Jelenas post about mash up of our projects. Its basically a flood of information for the end user and on a side note – a lucky case of possitive flood. They say its nice, becouse you can create. Yes, I agree. But then again – I want to be very strict in the sense, that if you create something, and it is not art – then it must be usable AND usefull. And created.

I’m leaning towards this: mash-it-up is ok in several cases, like: “I like it”, “I like to explore”, “I’d like to make a proof of concept”. And on the contrary – if you have to work with”mashed-up” things – you get a pain in … you head.When the free map will display the locations of “easy-going-girsl” next to the location where you invite your business partners, what then? If you life depends on the map – what do you choose: shiny MapPoint WS or standalone MapPoint application providing the same functionality? If my words don’t sound true to you – check it. Map point is sold as a standalone application, although you can get all of it online. Why? Becouse using WS’es is not good enought, although its beutifull. And if you STILL don think so – remember our presentations, some services failed us…

I dont know of a way to effectively control risks using SOA and there are defined methods to control risks in the case of usual applications. That is the main reason, why most business’es will stick to traditional applications, and partially ignore SOA island as a whole. Its like lego – easy to create very functional stuff from basic components (shiny, breath taking feature), but if you use lego to create stable platform for you HDD inside your PC box – well… lets just hope it wont crash and break some cable connector on our motherboard (as I AM hoping right now )

I dont think i said something new, but the question must be asked: how do you guarantee, that it will work after 5 years? Will you pay me, if it fails and I will have to remake it? Standalone apps WILL work until new generation of Windows(c) break (with a little “if”) them And its more likely, that hardware will break those apps, whereas considering WS – HW is not the main enemy.

Thus i just want to stress it – building on a shoulder of giant is not enought to make the house stand. The giant may move and you wont be able to stop it. It’s a giant after all.

How to control risk of using SOA? Why choose bigger risk, when all i need is a stable performance? Which cost is lower and why do you think so (the cost of WHOLE project, which achieves the same result): the SOA and the risk it brings or the more-or-less risk-free standalone app?

I encourage you to answer my question in the comments and you can try to change my oppinion.

Two reasons to do that:

• I like soa (LEGO was THE toy when i was a kid) , and I would like to hear your answers, so i can like and understand it even more.
• Most likely comments will be seen as an active participation in the blog

P.S. Talking about the people, who are afraid of gay meetings in public places, heres an idea:

“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
Benjamin Franklin