Recently I was asked to put together a presentation on content I was very unfamiliar with, yet the asker wanted it also to be interactive. After I suppressed my surge of nervousness, I got to work trying to come up with interactivity ideas. The problem I kept running into was that my lack of knowledge of the content would shine through the more I interacted with the crowd — a crowd who was very familiar with the content. 

I started asking around the office for ideas, and that’s when I was recommended MentiMeter.com . And this software/website in the free trial version saved the day! Menti allows you to ask the crowd a question and the audience responds through their phones or computers. The results are presented real time on the administrators portal, which you can project to the crowd. What’s especially cool is that you can have the audiences results in a variety of ways. Their submissions can pull up in word cloud form, where the most common responses are given a larger text size, or you could have the audience place their response within a two dimensional matrix, or along the spectrum. Or you can ask a survey question with defined answers, or leave it open ended.  There are many other options but these were the only ones I looked into for my use case.  

The one drawback I found was that the free version only gives you freedom to use these cool formats for two slides. After that I believe you are forced to ask multiple choice questions on your remaining slides. You can increase your slide count if you invite others to use the service via email,  or I supposed if you had multiple email accounts you could set up a few two slide presentations on multiple accounts.  But cough, cough I have no idea who would do something like that.  Of course there is also a paid version, but not knowing how it would all work out, I didn’t look into the cost or the additional features you get from paying.  But based on my last experience, as long as it’s not outrageously expensive I think it’s definitely worth considering. 

This presentation software (Menti) enabled me to engage and interact with audience without having to let on that I want that familiar with the content. Instead I simply asked authentic questions I was interested in learning and let the audience loose. With the real time feedback of the audience in an anonymous setting sparkled a ton of conversation.  This is especially important if you have a very hierarchical audience where once the highest ranking person speaks everyone else in the room simply tries to support/uplift their leader’s commentary. With Menti that’s an added benefit — the audience doesn’t know who wrote what. And finally, one additional feature I liked was that you could email the deck or individual slides to the audience members so they have quick reference to the topics that were discussed and important on the day. No more need to compile white board or poster paper notes and send them off to the audience. Their responses (i.e., the audience generated) notes are all captured real time. 

Overall, I loved the Menti experience and would recommend it to others looking for a cool way to make their presentation interactive.  My only word of advice is to pasty around with it for a few days before the presentation…everything is pretty intuitive but some of the response modules can take awhile to think how you want to set them up to incite the most conversation. I had an wesome experience, and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to others

Giving high quality presentations is a critical skill in nearly any corporate position. Presentations are how you promote your ideas, incite change, and get yourself noticed! Luckily giving and creating presentations are both skills that can be developed and honed by keeping a few key points in mind. Follow these few key principles, and practice, and you will be on your way to your next promotion!

1.) Understand your audience’s motivations – this seems obvious, but it’s surprising how many people forget this step. A presentation is almost always a sales pitch for something you want, or something that you want others to do for you. In order to sell anything, you need to know the key motivators in your audiences’ decision making process. You should then craft your message around these motivators. Also make sure to understand your audiences’ hurdles to implementation or increased workload. Try to minimize these issues for your audience beforehand, or at the very least, acknowledge that you know that challenges exist.

2.) Solutions first – Your recommendation or solution should be presented early in the presentation. This concept is also true on a slide-by-slide basis — the solution/recommendation should be in the title, subheading, or first bullet at latest. Build the deck so someone would be able to understand your point by skimming through the headlines of your deck. The body of the slide should be used to support or ‘prove” your position. This concept is a challenge, particularly for those who recently graduated. Academic slides are typically crafted exactly the opposite. They are designed to encourage students to craft their own opinion from the information presented. This doesn’t work in the business setting, where people are pressed for time, and simply want the answers.

3.) Tell a story – Peoples’ brains retain more information when it’s prepared in narrative form. By giving your presentation with a clear beginning, middle, and end, while flowing smoothly will help your audience follow along, and remember the content. Achieve a story-like presentation by creating an outline of your deck before creating it. Also, practice the presentation before giving it, but speaking it out loud. This may seem like an unnecessary step, but reading through the slides out loud helps to uncover major gaps in the storytelling process. Reserve a meeting room for yourself, and practice — out loud!

4.) Catch phrases get quoted – it’s always a good idea to have a good catch phrase or quote to include, and call out visually in your presentation. Think up a slogan that supports the main idea of your presentation. Speak the slogan early and often throughout the presentation. Additionally use block quotes to call out other one-liners that support your slogan. By doing this, you will burn your main idea into your audiences head. When they think of your presentation, they will be able to distill it mentally into your slogan. You and your ideas will be more memorable. (When you start doing this — watch how quickly others in your company start copying this tactic….it’s difficult not to notice how effective it is, when bosses start gingo around mentioning your catchphrases.)

5.) The appendix is for proof – complicated and data-filled charts are hard to read and follow. You want simple and easy charts for your audience. The chart should be able to convey your message without you being there. With that being said making charts that simple can be extremely difficult and can leave out other important details. In order to maintain your credibility and be able to explain your charts if necessary, make sure you put the supporting (more complicated) data in the appendix. The chart in your presentation should tell your story, and the data in the appendix should tell the chart’s story.

6.) Executive summarize – similar to the solutions first recommendation, higher level leaders rarely have time for long complicated decks, and often leave early for other meetings or answer emails throughout the meeting. By providing a clean and simple executive summary they are able to get the gist of your presentation without them sitting through your entire presentation. If they do stay, the executive summary will help them follow your story logically and easily. (If your company’s culture allows for it, it would be good to disallow the use of phones and computers before your meeting begins. Also offer to reschedule the meeting if key audience members need to leave early. You will have worked hard on your presentation, and making it easy to understand — demand that the audience gives you the attention you deserve.)

7.) Silence is a tool – this is surprisingly one of the most difficult ones for people to remember. By feeling comfortable with silence, you will feel less obligated to fill space with filler words (ex: ums, ah’s, so’s), and filler content (i.e., bullshit). Additionally, by allowing for periodic silence, you will give your audience time to think about and process your information.  Silence will actually omit a sense of confidence in your content. It may seem counter intuitive, but pay attention to good presenters in your company  — I bet they use this skill whether they realize it or not. (Slight Heads Up: Learning the meaning of your audience’s silence will take a bit of practice, and will require the reading of body language. An audience’s silence typically represents confusion or implicit understanding of your content — two almost completely opposite responses — so the right read on this will be critical. Test it out your first few presentations, by verbally confirming understanding with your audience after allowing for a few moments of silence.)

8.) Practice makes a presentation – whether you think you’re a great presenter or not, be sure to practice your presentation ahead of time. Reading through your presentation as you intend to present it ensures the story flows as you envision it in your mind. Reading it out loud also helps to determine where key places of emphasis should be made, and where hand gestures may help. Practicing is particularly important when a specific amount of time is alloted. The time you think it will take, is rarely the time it actually takes. Usually when you are watching great presenters, you’re actually watching a great “practicer.”

Try out these tips in your next few presentations. More specific presentation recommendations to follow in future articles!

Laffer Curve – Is a curve that depicts the relationship between the tax rate applied to (usually) income and amount of income tax collected. The upside down parabola basically explains that as tax rates rise, the amount of taxes collected increases until it reaches a maximum taxation rate threshold after which the amount of tax revenues collected quickly diminishes even at higher tax rates. The diminishing revenues portion of the curve is used to explain how once taxes become so high, the taxed population either begins lying about their income to avoid the higher taxation, or leaves the area where the taxes are being applied.