Presenting at the Australian Psychological Society conference: a few words of advice for those preparing slide shows

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Presenting at the Australian Psychological Society conference: a few words of advice for those preparing slide shows

Date Created: 18 Sep, 2005, 07:14 PM

I'm off to the Australian Psychological Society's Annual conference which is held in Melbourne this year.

My one registered day at the conference is September 28, when I am part of a forum of psychologists discussing practice issues, and I'll be discussing technologies in the workplace, or similar.

I hope the day works out well, since one day's registration would pay for a 2GB iPod nano, and I am seriously coveting one! I will be attending other free events like the AGM, and that's about it for me this year.

My guess is many who attend my session will see Apple's Keynote in action for the first time, so I suppose I'd better dream up something special but not too far from reality. My peers in general are not very enamoured of technology.

I will be blogging the few sessions I attend, and I will be very firm in my assessment of presentation skills. As a group, psychologists ought to know best how to present data in order to influence and inform, yet many I have seen - even from my Society's staff - leave a lot to be desired.

So, if you just happen to be presenting, and deciding to use slides, a few thoughts:

1. Choose easy on the eye backgrounds and foreground text. Try to keep away from the usual boring backgrounds.

2. Don't use chintzy text displays. Just bring the text onto the screen with a fade-in, or better still, just change slides. Nothing fancy, and certainly, no sound effects unless they are central to the slide. Be wary of overusing transitions and special effects.

3. No more than 3 points per slide. No great cut-and-paste wads of words.

4. For heaven's sake, don't read the slide.

5. Make your point vocally, then introduce the concept on the slide displaying as few words as possible. Make you the centrepiece of your presentation, not the slides.

6. Think carefully about your use of diagrams. Is a pie chart more effect than axes? Can the control group be clearly distinguished from the experimental groups?

7. Finish with a slide that shows your e-mail address, and a URL where the slides or other relevant information may be downloaded.

These are just a few ideas, but I know that I am probably whistling dixie here... do hunt around the web for sites devoted to better presentations. It's really not that hard.