Wired Presentations

The Virtual Presentation Handbook by Roger Courville

The Virtual Presenter’s Handbook by Roger Courville is the 4th of 52 books that I will read this year.

How did I find Roger’s book, The Virtual Presenter’s Handbook? I found this book because I am a webinar nerd. I just love delivering them. I think that I enjoy delivering them because it may be the most challenging presentation environment there is. Well, that may be an overstatement. “Do you have any final words before we flip the switch?” would be worse. Oh back to the book…

A few years ago I was a Technical Trainer at SAS. Part of the job was delivering courses over the Web. I had never done this before and it scared the life out of me. I asked for advice and no one had any. I looked for help everywhere. There was very little to be found. I decided that I would have to learn how to do it — on my own. I started by watching hundreds of hours of recorded webinars (virtual presentations). I learned what made one webinar better than another and then I taught myself how to do it.

Periodically, I will search Amazon for books of presenting over the Web. During one of those searches I found Roger’s book.

Why did I read the book? Although I am no longer an instructor I still love learning about virtual presentations. I still deliver them, just not as often. Plus, the skills using in virtual presentations apply to using Camtasia. Finally, I want to see if others concur with some of the things I discovered on my own.

Lessons learned. The insight that Roger provides here is very good. Even though the book doesn’t address teaching, or technical presentations, the topics covered can be applied to those fields. I really enjoyed reading about using the Web for sales and marketing presentations. It is an environment that I don’t encounter very often.

There are no discussions of specific tools in the book. The vendors do a great job of documenting their offerings and how to use them. Their tutorial videos are a great learning tool. There is no reason to waste space in the book for that. One of the things that makes the book great is it’s size. Or lack of size. It is a small book and gets straight to the point.

Roger makes a point of emphasizing practice. This was born out in my learning adventure. You have to know the tool that you are using. There is no time to try to figure-out how to make something work during a real presentation. It is hard to make that case to people and Roger does a great job at it. Every once in a while I teach people how to get started with virtual presentations using WebEx. The only way I have found to hammer this home is to make a “mistake” with the tool. I always use polling. Yes, I have a scripted procedure to intentionally screw it up. It highlights the need to practice very effectively.

The book contains a discussion of PowerPoint as well. The tried and true advice extolling the joy of bullet free slides is covered as is a neat trick for building slides without using animations. You see, many of the tools have issues with animations. I won’t spoil it for you but I can vouch for the technique. I use it all the time and it works very well.

One of the joys of virtual presentations is the unmuted phone. During our training classes we heard lots of interesting things. Most of which were quite funny and just a little embarrassing. I can honestly say that I have never heard a story as good as the one from the book. It is a hoot. Plus, the presenter’s reaction is incredibly funny. Seriously, it is almost worth the price of the book just to read the story.

The book has a wonderful discussion on how to make your webinars interactive. Interactivity is required for a great webcast. The vendors all have a common set of features to support this. Polls, chat and annotation tools that allow you do draw or type on the screen are common to all of them. Roger covers them in the book. We differ in our opinion of the annotation tools but that is probably a function of the subject matter we present.

The book is chock-full of useful tips and tricks. I haven’t scratched the surface. I guess you will just have to read it for yourself;)

The final verdict: Experienced Web presenters and newbies will both benefit from reading this book. I wish it had been around when I started.

Be sure to follow Roger on Twitter. You can also learn more at The Virtual Presenter Web site.

My journey to presentation Nirvana began with a huge failure. Perhaps catastrophic is a better word. All I can say is, it still bothers me.

It all began 10 years (Dec 1999) ago at a 40th anniversary party for my parents. My brother, Don, was speaking to the 100 or so people gathered for this special occasion. Suddenly, out of the blue, I heard him say, “I am sure Jeff has something to say!” At that point he signaled for me to come up to the podium.

I froze — gripped with fear — and did nothing. Don quickly went on to something else and I sat there — A HUGE FAILURE. I can’t begin to describe how I felt, but I can assure you it wasn’t good.

Fast forward 10 years. It is now their 50th Anniversary celebration. This time I wasn’t scared at all. I chose to say a few words but it would have been fine if I hadn’t. You see, it was my choice. Fear didn’t control me.

Being a prisoner of fear of is holding you back!

Assignment: Find a quiet place and think about how your fear of public speaking is effecting your life. Now, visualize situations where the confidence to face this fear will help you. The key is to imagine as much detail as possible. Make it real in your mind.

Make the choice to confront the fear and banish it! Public speaking WILL change your life — I promise.

How do you do banish this fear? Hummmmm … stayed tuned!

Ben Decker has posted an excellent article entitled “Feedback in Threes: Keepers, Improvements (& Video).” If you are interested in significantly improving your presentation skills you should take a second and read it. Don’t worry. I’ll wait for you.

The Decker’s lead a communications company and they live to help people improve their skills. Feedback it one of the pillars when it comes to presentation improvement. Their students pay to learn these skills, but they really are paying for someone to honestly tell them how they doing and what they need to do to improve. When a student asks Kelly Decker, “how did I do that time?” that student REALLY wants an honest answer.

Let’s change the scene: You have just attended a presentation that a friend or co-worker has delivered. Let’s say that you felt like ducking when faced with all those bullets, your head hurts from trying to read all those paragraphs in that 8 pt font, she ran over by 30 minutes and every other sound was an “Ah” or “Um.”  Immediately after finishing up your friend approaches you. Out of breath. Excited. She asks, “How did I do?”

What are you going to say?

Here is what your friend wants to hear from you.

“It was awesome. You were great up there.”

It’s that simple. And it’s one of the reasons that we have to suffer through so many less than stellar presentations.

When you really get down to it there are only two kinds of presentations, speeches, training sessions, etc. I am going to use the term presentation to represent all of these events.

The Necessary Presentation – This type of presentation means something. You want the audience to take action or learn something that they can put to good use. Success lies in having an educated or motivated audience — an audience that does something as a result of the experience.

When I was a trainer this was our standard. Whether the class was held in a physical room or over the Web we cared that people learned, really learned, the important points of the topics we taught. In fact, we loved receiving e-mails from students reporting what they were able to accomplish using SAS simply because they attended our training.

I call this the necessary presentation because that’s what it is. You need to accomplish something and the presentation will help you do that.

The Check Mark Presentation – Sadly, this is category where most of the world’s presentations fall. Someone decides that the project plan has a presentation task on it. You may not even know why it’s there. The goal here is not “to change the world” but for someone higher up on the food chain to be able to say, “my group delivered this presentation.” Effectiveness isn’t the priority. It’s usually timeliness. Granted, the difference between the two types of presentations can be subtle but you know a “check mark” presentation when you see one.

Here are the classic calling cards of the “check mark” presentation: tons of bullet points, sloppy, boring, long-winded, etc. I could go on-and-on but I won’t; This isn’t a “check mark” blog posting. These types of presentations are the way they are because they are taken for granted or very little time is allotted to their creation. You may hear things like, “we always have a status WebEx on Friday. It’s no big deal” or “we have to get this information out there fast.” I have a theory that many “check mark” presentations are nothing more than documents that would take too long to write. It’s much easier to throw bullet points on slides and verbally bore people to death than it is to create a proper document.

There will be times you may have to deliver “check mark” presentations. If you are an employee you have no choice. You do have a choice regarding the quality. With a little creativity you can turn a “check mark” presentation into something that entertains, motivates, educates and is perhaps — necessary.

One of the ways that you can improve your presentation skills is to study the work of others. You can find examples of great, and not so great, presentations on the Internet. I like looking at great examples.

It helps if the presenters are good — very good. You want to find people who are passionate and know a lot about their topic. They should also care deeply about their subject. You are looking for people who look natural, not actors. In short, you want them to be genuine.

Dave Ramsey falls into that category. Dave’s mission in life is to bring “financial peace” to the world.

As you watch the video answer these questions:

How does Dave connect with the audience?

How does he use humor during the presentation?

What do you think of the television monitors at the edge of the stage? Does he appear to use them?

What techniques or skills can you learn from Dave that will make you a better presenter?

Watch Dave Ramsey present

It appears that not everyone is a “Jeff Fan.” Take a moment to read how wrong I am.

On the other hand, some find my advice useful.

Fortunately for all of us, everyone is entitled to their opinions!

[Update] It looks like Angela DeFinis is on the side of sometimes you are REQUIRED to read a presentation (or speech).

Three days ago I wrote that there may be a time when you need to read a speech. The response on Twitter indicated that some people were skeptical. Today four candidates for the Wake County (NC) school board proved me right!

I was driving to the grocery store when I heard these folks talking on the radio. I was struck buy 3 things:

Thing 1 – Get coaching: Not a single one of them was good at public speaking. Com’on people. If you are going to run for public office there is a slight possibility that you will need to speak in public. I imagine that these folks are comfortable speaking in public and believe that comfort equals skill. It doesn’t.

Here is a suggestion to anyone in the Triangle area of North Carolina thinking of running for office: Take a communications course. Contact Alan Hoffler at MillsWyck Communications. He can help you stand out from the crowd. Call him or send him e-mail now!

Thing 2 – Practice for the situation you will face by role playing: It didn’t sound like any of them had role-played being on the radio. False starts. Stutters. Dead air. It was all there. I bet they could have made arrangements to visit the radio station and practice using the equipment. At a minimum they could have recorded themselves and figured-out that they were speaking too fast and were not pausing. A great point would be made and then quickly disappear because it was washed away by the next thing that they needed to force in there.

They were so nervous that I felt sorry for some of them. Again, practice is key here. One of them stated that they have a Doctorate. All I could do is wonder why someone so educated was so ill prepared. Practice. Practice. Practice.

Thing 3 – If you are going to read a speech then learn how to do it right: All 4 of these candidates read their closing comments. It was dreadful. The speech feature of my Kindle would have had more nuance and emotion. Good’ole Kindle would have been smoother too. That is just sad. Everyone should practice reading aloud. Everyone.

Bonus Thing – There has to be something that you really care about: Each one of these candidates had lots of things that they were “concerned” about. They were all over the place. I have learned that stuffing more content into the allotted time hurts much more than it helps. Pick 2 or 3 issues and know them inside and out. Care about them. Immerse yourself in them. Hammer them home. Show you have great depth in your issues. In short: Own your issues.

Disclaimer: This post is about recording Camtasia videos. I am not suggesting that you pack slides with text and then read them to an audience during a live presentation (also a terrible idea when using Camtasia).

You will hear lots of people say “You should NEVER read a presentation!” They say this because most people sound like they are reading when they do this. Are there any times when you should violate this Sacred Presentation Rule?

The answer is a resounding YES! In fact, there are some times when you will be required to read your speech.

My previous day job required me to produce Camtasia videos . These videos were recorded lectures and software demos. Federal law (Section 508) requires a transcript so that meant that either I had to write a transcript of what was said or I had to read from a script.

I thought about it for a while, experimented with multiple ways of creating videos and decided that writing a script and reading it was the way to go. At first the going was rough. I sounded like I was reading and that is is not good. As I practiced a funny thing happened — I quit sounding like I was reading and the content was much better than if I had simply started talking.

Here are a few hints that will help you learn to read aloud without sounding like you are reading.

You have to write for the spoken word. It was a surprise to discover that I could write something that I could not read aloud. This mostly involved cryptic SAS or Teradata options. It was impossible for me to say them one after the other. I had a reviewer tell me that he had a hard time listening understanding the narration when this occured. This was a good lesson to learn. The solution is to rewrite so that you can actually read the script.

Writing helps you focus on the point you are trying to make. Writing and reading allows you to avoid tangents. When you are making a point anything that competes for attention is going to distract and confuse your viewers. My videos are used as training so that would be the “kiss of death.” Make it easy for them to understand and remember your point. Remember, make it obvious!

Practice! This one isn’t fun but it is required. If you don’t practice you will never get this right. If you are using Camtasia to produce your videos then you can use it for practice. You can also use a voice recorder or phone. Read something and record your voice. Listen to it. Make notes on one or two areas for improvement. Read some more and focus on those areas. Repeat until you are happy with the results.

Accept the FACT that you aren’t going to make a great recording on your first take. I had a guy ask me to help him with a Camtasia recording one day. I explained the workflow that I use and when I got to the “Practice” portion he explained that he was great at reading aloud and could do it in one take. I told him that one take wasn’t a reasonable goal. He then told me that it would be OK because he used to work in radio. Long story short — he sucked and people noticed it. No one is above practice! Expecting great results on the first take is unreasonable.

Record each slide individually and then piece them together when using Camtasia. You need to play with your specific workflow but I create my slides and then save them as images using PowerPoint. I import the images and then narrate over them. I alwo record my software demos and then narrate over them at a later time. You don’t have to do it this way. It just works best for me.

Use the notes section in PowerPoint. I use the notes section for my script. I make sure to never record more text than will fit on a printed page (slide and notes). If you really need more than that you can make a copy of the slide and put additional text there. You want to keep the individual recording manageable. Using the notes section keeps your script with your slides. If you are doing software demos then you may want to use screen shots and text to document them. I use Microsoft Word for this but you can use whatever you like.

Learning to read without sounding like you are reading will help your live presentations. I am not talking about reading while you are presenting live here. If you want to learn to vary your voice and add excitement to your live presentations then you should learn to read without sounding like you’re reading. In Toastmasters this is called “vocal variety.” The practice sessions help you develop vocal variety.

These ideas will help you with pod casting as well. Adding excitement and variety to your voice will help you engage your audience. Plus, done properly you won’t sound like you’re reading. Give it a try; I think that you will be glad you did.

No one was going to comment on it. Yet, there it was — a huge mass of nose hair. It jetted out of each nostril; in fact, it made his nose look like a space ship. Yes, I said his nose. If you are thinking “Cool!” then raise your hand.

This is a guy thing; actually, it is an old guy thing.

I cannot recall anything the guy said. That is definitely a problem. I immediately went out and bought a tool. I am a guy, it is what we do.

Guys, stop what you are doing and find a mirror. See if you have a problem in this –ah um — area. If you “can’t see the trees for the forest,” then buy a nose hair clipper.

Ladies, you may as well buy one for your husband. He won’t know that he needs it; he won’t buy one even if he did. If you buy it, he will use it because it is a tool and that is what guys do. Don’t be surprised if he finds other uses for it.

If the problem is really bad, stop reading this and order a nose hair trimmer. Please, do it.

Now, for something completely, completely, different.

A nose hair game

It is very easy to write something that is impossible to say out loud!

I learned this by writing and recording scripts for video presentations (Camtasia). The presentations that I do have narration over slides and software demos. It’s not TV.

Here is how I handle it. First, just write the script for each slide. I use the notes section in PowerPoint for this. You do use the notes section in PowerPoint don’t you? If not, you should.

The next thing I do is read it out loud. If you read it silently you won’t know how hard it is to say it. Edit the dialog for that particular slide until you are satisfied. Move onto the next slide and repeat.

You would think that that would be enough, but it isn’t. Once you have all your slides and scripts ready you need to fire-up your recording tool. Load your slides and record your script. Hitting that record button makes it real. If you have trouble reading portions of the script then rewrite. Repeat this until you make it through your presentation.

Listen to the recording

Here is the hard part: now you need to listen to the recording. Expect to do a lot of starting, stopping and rewinding. As you find dialog that you don’t like rewrite it. The pause button is your friend.

Once you are satisified that it is passable have a friend, someone who will tell you the truth, listen to it and give you feedback.

Listen to the feed back. Take notes. Listen to the recording again with those comments in mind. If you need to make changes then make them and repeat the recording process.

The trick is to sound like you are carrying on a conversation and not reading a script. It is harder than it sounds. Pretend that you are an actor. Use your voice to convey emotion. This applies even if you are talking about Teradata;) In fact, your voice is really important. Learn to use it well.

If you are interested in giving this a try you can download the recording software the Internet. At work we use Camtasia. I like it a lot but it does cost $299 (you can get a 30 demo license for free).

For you Toastmasters out there — one day spent doing this will teach you a great deal about using your voice and pausing. I bet you learn more in two days than you will in 20 club speeches. Give it a shot and let me know if I am wrong.

PS: Why do I write out exactly what I am going to say? Two reasons.

One: It makes the recording task easier and I can really focus on how I say things.

Two: The videos that I do are sold and must have exact transcripts. This is to comply with federal handicap access laws. I find it easier to do the transcripts before I record.