Technical Presentation Resources
Technical experts are integrated into every aspect of their company’s enterprise. And their ability to present what they know to a variety of audiences is essential for their company’s success.
What makes these experts good at what they do — their analytic natures, thoroughness, obsession with getting it right — doesn’t necessarily make them good presenters. They tend to go into too much detail, providing too much information, relying too much on their slides and not enough on their interaction with the audience. Their audiences tune them out. And their proposals fizzle.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
1. Technical presentations don’t have to be boring. Chris Witt shows technical experts how to plan, create, and deliver presentations that audiences (even nontechnical ones) can understand pay attention to .
2. Technical presentations don’t have to be confusing. A good presentation begins with developing a strategy — deciding what you want the audience to do as a result of listening to you. Then you eliminate everything that doesn’t advance your goal.
3. A technical presentation is a sales presentation. Technical experts never want to think of themselves as giving a sales presentation, and yet they need to sell their ideas..
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Resources for Technical Presenters and Technical Presentations
In the pages that follow you’ll find tips and strategies that technical presenters can use to increase their effectiveness.
How to Plan a Technical Presentation
Here’s how to plan a technical presentation so it is clear and convincing, even if you’re speaking to a mixed audience.
How to Develop Confidence Speaking
Here are 12 ways to gain confidence in front of any audience.
How to Connect with your Audience
The best way to build support for your ideas is to develop a (positive) connection with your audience. Here’s how.
How to Prepare a Presentation
As you begin the preparation for your presentation, do not turn on PowerPoint and start creating slides. Sit down with a pad and pencil and answer these four questions
How to Plan an Oral Proposal
Technical experts are sometimes called in to be part of a team making an oral proposal for large contracts. Here’s some ideas of how to start preparing.
How to Improve a Technical Presentation
Here are three ways you can improve just about any technical presentation.
10 Tips for Using Visual Aids
Visual aids — like PowerPoint — are an aid to communication, not a substitute for it. Here are ways to use them effectively.
The Seven Biggest Presentation Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
It is easy to make mistakes when you’re giving a presentation. Here’s a list of seven presentation mistakes to avoid.
Effective Handouts
Handouts are an integral part of most technical presentations, so their design, use, and distribution require careful planning.
How to Handle Questions and Answers
Depending on your preparation, questions can unnerve and sidetrack you or allow you to clarify and strengthen your presentation. Preparation makes the difference.
Hallmarks of an Effective Presentation
An effective presentation is like an animated conversation. It’s clear, honest and direct. It seeks to accomplish one goal. And it’s filled with lively detail.
DISC Behavioral Styles
DISC is a behavioral style analysis that can help you improve your interpersonal communications and your business relationships by understanding other people’s and your own styles of communicating.
Communication Tips
Here’s another page with links to even more tips and strategies that technical presenters — and anyone else, for that matter — can use to increase their effectiveness. (Links will take you to pages about “How to Resolve Conflict,” “The 7 Principles of Influence,” “How to Remember Names,” “Strategic Listening,” “People Skills Pay the Bills,” and many more.
Speaking Tips
Here’s still another page with links to even more tips and strategies that every type of presenter — leaders, aspiring leaders, happy-that-I’m-not-a-leader people, technical experts — can use to become more confident and commanding speakers.
