Presenting

It wouldn’t be presentation management without the presenting. With today’s technology there are many options for how you present your content.

Human contact is how relationships are solidified. Look people in the eyes, read their body language, watch them react to what you are saying. That is how strong relationships are built. Presentation management fosters better business relationships through higher-quality meetings. Let’s look at how in some different presentation settings.

One-to-one: One-to-one meetings are less formal and more intimate. The presenter can give the presentation directly from her laptop, iPad or even her phone. One-to-one presentations allow for more feedback and discussion. It’s also an easier format to switch to interactive mode, where the presenter selects content based on the other person’s feedback. The presentation can follow the conversation. The presenter can learn more and therefore propose a better solution tailored to that person. These are very productive meetings.

One-to-several: This is typically a conference room setting where one presenter is addressing a group of up to 20 people. A monitor or screen is needed. Though it’s more formal in nature, there is still the opportunity to go interactive as audience members raise issues and ask questions. The FDA Advisory Committee presentations are one to several, with an emphasis on interactivity to conduct a detailed question and answer.

One-to-many: This is an auditorium setting, which is more formal. Presentation management allows the presenter to give a pre-rehearsed presentation while fielding and answering questions from audience members. The ability to answer tough questions on the fly, supported by visuals, adds to the speaker’s credibility.

Conference: Slide libraries are an integral tool for conference managers who need to collect and manage presentations for any number of speakers. In this scenario, your presentation management solution will manage the collection, organization, approvals and presentations on the day of the event. It reduces the administration burden on the event managers. Speakers send a presentation directly to the slide library, where it is automatically tagged based on pre-configured speaker credentials. Workflow settings can be applied so the presentation gets routed to the appropriate editors and/or approvers in preparation for the conference. And finally, on conference day, the presentations are already tagged and sorted so they can be assigned to the appropriate speaker, breakout room and time. The presentation is right there, ready to go on the podium. The speaker can even present directly from the library, if your library has broadcast capability.

Linear versus interactive presentations: A linear presentation, like your typical PowerPoint, is a pre-ordered set of slides -- slide one, slide two, slide three, slide four and on and on.. It’s organized, predictable and easy for the speaker to control. Interactive presentations are more like browsing a website: You click on one thing, which leads you to another. Then, someone asks a question, so you spontaneously pull up another slide, video or image that addresses that question. It’s free-form and it follows the conversation. Linear presentations force the conversation. Interactive presentations follow the conversation.

Interactive presentations foster productive conversations where both sides learn more about the other. In more than 20 years of presentation consulting, we’ve noticed that the more senior the executive, the more likely they are to present in interactive mode. They don’t need the security of a linear list. Though the nice thing about today’s interactive presentation tools is that they can accommodate both scenarios. They can let you go off-topic and spontaneously present content, and then click a back button to get back to the main storyline. It’s the best of both worlds: control and spontaneity.