Tips & tricks for a GREAT presentation at Wi-Fi NOW

We’ve got many great & very experienced speakers lined up for Wi-Fi NOW International – but just in case you’d like our input to what makes for a good  (hopefully GREAT!) presentation, here are some tips & tricks.

In my experience, a great presentation is 80% confidence and 20% content. That of course doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have provocative, insightful content.

Here some tips on what you should do:

• Try to tell a story instead of presenting a solution. I sometimes start with the conclusion of the story, then go back to the buildup.
• Examples from live cases with numbers always add a lot of credibility
• We like strong personal opinions and so does your audience! Tell us what you believe in (and what you don’t believe in)
• Slides ideally should be an illustration of what you’re saying – or perhaps a small reminder to yourself of your storyline. Both are fine.
• Keep your slides simple! One idea per slide is great if you can.
• If you present your ideas as text, simple ‘appear’ PPT animation per text line works well to keep attendees focus (and not read ahead)
• On average, 2 minutes per slide works well but it does depend on your approach (one idea per slide or one idea per text line)
• For a 20-30 minute slot we recommend not using more than 10 slides (unless your show proceeds very fast)
• Remember to face the audience and speak directly to them!
• Sum up your main message at the end with 1-2 clear statements

Here some things that we mostly don’t recommend:

• Very text-heavy slides should be avoided since they force listeners to read rather than listen to you!
• We like technology but very detailed tech slides are hard to present. If you chose to do it anyway, pick out 1-2 main points from the diagram or chart and focus on them

Practical details on presenting at Wi-Fi NOW Internationals:

• We will load your presentation (PPT format) onto a Mac computer that is connected to our presentation system
• Please do not use customised fonts as we cannot promise that our presentation computer will support them
• 16:9 or standard format is fine – either will work
• Please report to our technical staff 5 minutes before presentation time so that we can get you wired up for sound

And if you’re still in doubt, don’t hesitate to drop me a line at [email protected].

/Claus.