In the middle of writing this article, a friend sent me a link to this post by Seth Godin. It nicely summed up what I was thinking about. I suggest you go check it out, then check back here for some thoughts and personal experiences.

Was it Good For You?

What makes for a good public presentation, seminar, or panel discussion?

I attend quite a few of these every year, at all levels from the local user group meetings up to global events like GDC and FITC. I see student presentations, academic presentations, professional presentations and pitch meetings. Over time, my tastes have matured by listening to speaker after speaker, and I’ve come to understand that many of the things I originally thought made for a great presentation actually do not.

Critical Thinking

I want to be clear here that critical thinking does not mean coming into someone’s presentation jaded and expecting the worst. On the contrary, you, the audience, owe it to yourselves to pay close attention to what is being presented. After all, you paid for it and so did those around you. Listening, really listening, is a skill that can be developed. You should be able to come away from the presentation with some new knowledge or stimulus. Therein lies problem number one – many presentations simply are not sharing anything new from the personal experience of the presenter. Let me share a few examples.

Standard Bad Presentation Template

I once took in a seminar that I felt really illustrated the worst parts of a bad presentation. If you care to put together a similar bad presentation of your own I’m providing the following template (please don’t, I’m being facetious here). The format went like this;

1. Start with an off-color joke.
2. Apologize up front that something outside of your control has prevented you from being totally ready.
3. Promise that near the end you’re going to show something really amazing.
4. Start reading publicly available information about the subject (in my example it was wikipedia)
5. Make references to other people’s work, and claim to have done similar work, but don’t show any examples of this.
6. Towards the end, announce that there won’t be time to show that amazing thing you promised, but claim it will go up on your site/blog soon so people should keep checking out your site. (Alternatively, you can claim technical difficulties instead of time constraints.)
7. There is no point seven, you’re done! Woohoo! No need to follow up, post your notes, or respond to emails from your audience.

Other signs of a bad presentation include arriving late, spending a lot of time finding and opening materials, and general disrespect for the audience. And frankly if the wifi goes down the presenter should not be stumbled if they have presented more than once.

Over the years, I’ve seen variations of this bad presentation over and over again. It is easy to miss it when you’re being manipulated by a presenter, particularly if their presentation style is entertaining and they are charismatic. But there is a simple way you can avoid getting scammed – demand proof.

Demand Proof

Do not assume that because someone is standing in front of an audience they know what they are talking about. In many cases, this might not be so at all. Or they may be experts in a very narrow subset of the field they are discussing. The point is, whether it is Steve Jobs or the guy from your stamp collecting club, or your college professor, the same rules apply. Question everything, use your reasoning ability. Demand proof in the form of examples, statistics, case studies. True, all of these things can be manipulated by a presenter to favor their conclusions, but at least you can then decide whether the evidence favors what the speaker is saying. At that point, they have done their job, and are not fleecing the audience.

Question Authority (respectfully)

It is not disrespect to question the statements of authority figures. On the contrary, those who are truly into what they do will welcome it. Richard Feynman, the nobel-prize winning physicist once complained openly that people stopped questioning him when he won the top science prize, it was very upsetting to him.

A few Examples

At the Mesh conference (MeshU to be precise), a speaker gets a question regarding HTML5 and Flash. His answer is that ‘everyone knows Flash is disappearing, and it is only used for banner ads and animated splash intros’. The audience nods and smiles.
Notice the format there? No substantiation or case studies – this answer is purely speculation on the part of the presenter, but nowhere is it prefaced with a statement like “in my opinion…” (Please see bullet 1 and 4 of Godin’s post)

At WordCamp, a presenter shows a bunch of popular plugins made by others then claims ‘we make plugins like this for clients all the time’. He repeats this many times, yet no example of such a plugin is shown, and nowhere can any be found on his site. Maybe they have made popular plugins, but where is the evidence of it? (see bullet 11)

In a panel discussion, one presenter talks over the others by being louder, swearing, and cracking jokes. He establishes credibility by poking fun and making wild claims. He is covered in tattoos and has interesting hair, while his fellow panelists are dressed like, well, nerds. If you were in the audience, would your alarm bell go off? Would you start keeping an internal count of the number of times he diverted your attention using humor or simply a loud voice? Would you make a note to yourself to research those vague references he made to work he had done? (see bullet 10)

Let me be clear here. I am not suggesting there is no room for color or personality in a presentation. Having a personal flair is great. But a presentation can not be based on style, and have no good substance.

Critical Thinking Categories

With critical thinking, you tend to start grouping presenter’s statements into a few categories based on whether they have made an effective case. You wind up with a pile of “yes”, “no”, and “sort of” lists. If you have time, you could research the “sort of” and prove/disprove it on your own. Remember that the point is not whether you agree with the presenter (that is entirely at your discretion), but rather whether they presented well. If you find your lists weigh heavily towards “not proven”, then it was a bad presentation, no matter how entertaining.

If enough people exercise critical thinking, the conference or event gets better and better each time. Otherwise it dissolves and loses focus. When a conference loses focus, it may be fun to attend for social reasons, but it should probably be the first one you drop from your agenda if you can only hit a limited number of events during the year.