7 ways to help you think your presentations through

One often overlooked but critical step in preparing for a presentation is the thinking stage.

All of us who have ever had to do public presentations have probably shared a similar experience: someone comes up in your cubicle/office/life (circle correct answer based on your hierarchical/emotional relation with said person) and asks you to prepare a 30mn or so presentation for the end of the week.

Before you know it, you've launched PowerPoint, Keynote or Impress and you've already written ten slides using the default template (you know, the one with those dreaded bullets - did I mention I hate those?). By the time you've spent the first 15-30 mn working on this, you've created a monster, a hybrid, half-scratchpad half-presentation: ideas are not organized, there's a good chance you've overlooked a good half of your topic, your slides are uninspiring and you're pretty much guaranteed to put the audience to sleep in less than a minute.

So put this mouse down, close the presentation software and start thinking it through. Everyone need to take some time to put their thoughts together, organize their ideas, do some research, decide how they are going to tell the story and map out a plan of their presentation.

Putting the effort will be highly rewarding and I guarantee it will dramatically enhance the quality of your presentation, even if you are short of time and think you know your subject.

So here are 7 ways to help you during that stage:

1 - Close the computer: take a notepad and start throwing out ideas. I know it sounds lame but if you have nothing at your disposal (not even a connection to the Internet) that's still the best way I know. In fact, you should incorporate that in every "thinking" phase, regardless of what other method you use.

2 - Map your ideas: one disadvantage of the notepad is that once an idea is on the page, it can't be edited easily. You need to add some spatial dimension to your ideas and be able to move them around to better organize them. You can use post-it on a whiteboard or a mind mapping software such as mindjet mindmanager for instance. First throw as many things as you can think of, second, organize ideas in logical group, three, further explore some ramifications, four, before you now it you have a plan.

3 - Google it: type some search terms that relate to your topic or a specific aspect of it, and look for information sources. Look at the "Images" results to help you do some free association and find new ideas. Append "filetype:ppt" or "filetype:pdf" to your search string to restrict the results to a certain type of files (you'd be surprised how many powerpoint presentations are accessible directly from Google). Use Google Trends to measure and compare the popularity of search terms.

4 - Slideshare: if you're not familiar with it, slideshare is a web site on which people put their presentations for everyone to see, and sometimes download. It's a great source of inspiration when you want to see how other people have tackled the same topic you need to. Careful though, ripping is not inspiration. It's perfectly OK to use ideas that you'd not have thought about in the first place, but re-using slides as it is not a good idea and will make your pres look like an unfinished patchwork.

5 - TED: another great inspiration source is TED, a conference which has gathered some of the most brilliant people on the planet for quite some years in an effort to get them to share their thoughts and experience. The best part about TED: there are several hundreds of video available online (and some of them feature the very best presenters and presentations in the world) and the choice of subject is very large: culture, tech, economy, history, psychology, ecology, biology, physics, education ...

6 - Take it from the pros: no matter what you're talking about take some presentation lessons from the pros of this world to help you achieve new ways to frame your subject. I recommend looking at presentations from Garr Reynolds from Presentation Zen, Seth Godin (youTube is your friend), Edward Tufte and the work from Duarte Design (I recommend their book: slide:ology). You can also venture in the world of design to help you express some of your ideas with great visuals.

7 - Talk: OK, so you're in the middle of the jungle, you have no power, no Internet and you just broke a nail. There's still one thing you can do to help yourself prepare: talk. Try to pitch the core of your presentation to the first available human being you can find (who is not hostile and seems remotely interested in your subject). 2 things will come out of it: while pitching it, you will probably realize how mature or not your story is. Great presentations don't need slide. A 5 mn pitch in front of someone is certainly a good way to see how ready you are. Secondly, you will get feedback, something that no other tool can give you. It'll be like knowing the results of a race before it takes place. You'll be able to see what's working and what's not and you will have time to make the necessary adjustments before you do the real thing.

So next time you have a presentation to do, set aside some time and think things through. After all, you would not write an essay without preparing right ? Oh, you would ? OK, we'll talk about that later then.