Guest Post: Kunal Chopra

Kunal is one of Chris' Summer 2010 Professional Speaking students. Here he writes about real-world presentations.

Whoo!!! Just as I am writing this blog, I’ve come fresh from delivering a mock presentation which was actually not mock in any sense. But before I talk about it, I remember those times when I used to admire those people putting on business suits and delivering presentations during my undergraduate days. I used to get totally enthralled listening to those presentations. If I can think of applying a blink test to a presentation, I would notice the style with which the presentation is being delivered. But if I talk about the first impression, it is not just a blink test which will give a so called flick. I believe the fluency with which the speaker delivers a presentation is another aspect which cannot be ignored. In a gist of what I said above, it’s the style and fluency of the presentation delivery that gives a “Lasting Impression”.

How do I go about drafting a real-world presentation? The answer to this question is very subjective. How big shall the presentation be? Which videos shall I embed in the deck? Which visuals and where do I place them in the respective slides? How do I make slides which are not cluttered but objectively list all the bullet points for the respective agenda items? How can I make my agenda very specific? Do not you think that drafting a presentation requires significant investment in brainstorming and logical thinking? It’s like you are trying to make two ends meet. Every presentation text book will list down the steps to make a presentation and how to go about delivering it. I always think that those steps are very relevant and important but I think a little differently while preparing a presentation. I think that it’s of utmost importance to making your presentation “CRISPY”. It’s even more important to deliver a presentation which is very interactive and descriptive. Sense of humor should be a part of every interval. You do not want the audience’s mind to meander after a span of 30 minutes in the presentation. Would not it be an ideal presentation which will keep your audience in anticipation of more excitement or useful information every other moment? Of course, it depends a lot on the topic. But I somehow believe that you can always prepare your deck/slides and alter the way of delivering the presentation keeping in mind the kind/type of audience attending the presentation.

As I said, I started writing this blog after giving a mock presentation. It was not mock in any sense since it accounts for around half of the total grade in a course called Professional Speaking. I am attending this course in my graduate program. I can talk at length on what I have learned from the presentation lecture but if you want me to talk about the most significant take away from the lecture then I will not be able to emphasize enough the importance of content-related videos, animations and visuals. The second important take-away is the presence of your title and name in the footer of the presentation. I observed that if these takeaways made our class so charged up than it should be applicable to a range of audiences during real-world presentations.

I have delivered various technical presentations over the course of my five-year career in the domain of Information Security and Risk Management. I can tell you that the presentations I have delivered have been very intense. Security is an area which has to be taken very seriously and as such it requires strong commitment and backup from the management. These kinds of presentations are mostly delivered at the CXO level. I remember giving a presentation to Singapore International Airlines (SIA) in their office at Singapore. It was a big day for me as it was the first presentation that I was delivering to such a senior level audience. I always believe that if you are not nervous, there is a very high probability of sailing through a presentation without any hiccups. But nervousness is the major factor which makes a newbie go haywire.

I have liked delivering presentations and would want to give many more presentations as I move ahead in my career. Prof. Chris Labash's academic teachings and notes taken and provided by Abby would go a long way in drafting and delivering real world presentations on several topics and sectors.