Conversational presenting

Conversational Presenting.

Introduction.

For many decades, people from ceremonial podiums and famous stages around the world have delivered inspiring linear presentations that help their audiences to feel empowered or see things in a new way (think TED). The delivery style in office spaces has followed suit, but without the same degree of success.

Re h e a r s e d a n d i n f l ex i b l e s c r i p t s i n t h e workplace have too often caused listeners to struggle to remain interested. And, in today’s world of rapidly decreasing attention s p a n s a n d d e m a n d i n g m o b i l e d ev i c e s , a typical business presentation falling flat is almost expected.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be that way.

With a shift in approach, presenters can turn their presentations into dialogues, making them interactive and interesting enough to keep viewers tuned in while their pocket-sized screens remain in the pockets where they belong.

Welcome to what we at Prezi call Conversational Presenting. This two-way approach enables presenters to jump straight into the content that matters most to any given audience, creating a consistently relevant and engaging experience from beginning to end.

In this e-book, we’ll take a closer look at exactly why the traditional approach consistently falls short in business, the future of presenting as we see it, and how adopting our method can help you be more successful in your endeavors.

CHAPTER ONE

One way is the wrong way.

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ONE WAY IS THE WRONG WAY

Stage fright, sweaty palms, forgotten lines, oh my!

Public speaking is a visceral fear for many of us, and for good reason. To begin with, nothing triggers our nerves quite like standing up in front of a crowd. Second, speeches are typically memorized, and when we memorize, we create a lot of unnecessary opportunity for those nerves to cause mistakes—such as forgetting a line or stumbling over a word.

Have you ever planned a presentation according to an allotted amount of time? When presenters are tasked with filling up, say, a 15-minute block, they tend to spend a good chunk of it talking about themselves. It should come as no surprise that audiences would rather dig into the parts of the presentation that are most beneficial to them, but memorized slides don’t provide the flexibility needed to discover and prioritize this information.

One-way delivery makes such filler material a natural alternative.

Have you ever been guilty of reading directly from a slide during a presentation? While doing so can ease any concerns about forgetting what to say, over-reliance on software can make a bad situation even worse. An audience’s attention is influenced by the attention of a presenter, and just like a magician

distracting a crowd from the mechanics of his tricks, it can be advantageous. Done wrong, it can be a complete disaster. After all, nothing about reading a screen along with the main act—who should be stealing the show—strikes as particularly compelling.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that audience members are no different from anyone else: their time is precious. If they have to sit through a presentation that’s impersonal, uninteresting, or only asks them to engage at the start and end, they’re likely going to spend the the majority of it sneaking in personal tasks, like checking email or social media.

CHAPTER TWO

Presenting is a two-way street.

PRESENTING IS A TWO-WAY STREET

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Make it a conversation, not a lecture.

Conversational presenting turns everything about the traditional approach on its head in two moves that are radically different from what we’re used to:

1. The Structure.

Instead of telling a story page by page (or slide by slide), conversational presenting utilizes a single space. With the zoom and panning features Prezi offers, this space can be explored in new ways each time, just like a digital map.

Changing the format has the biggest impact on the presenter. Rather than committing a sequence of information to memory, this map-like arrangement requires unprompted knowledge.

Learning to tell the story in an unstructured way results in being able to speak to any part in any order, and that makes for a much more confident, persuasive presenter.

Conversational presenting is a little like this in that it requires just enough participation from the audience to keep them engaged.

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PRESENTING IS A TWO-WAY STREET

2. The Delivery.

Designed for an interactive delivery, a conversational presentation relies on audience participation.

Beginning with a question can get the dialogue going, and ultimately allow the presenter to plot a course. At Prezi, we suggest a simple but effective start: What would you like to focus on?

“What would you like to focus on?”

Once an audience member declares what he or she would like to know more about, the presenter is able to quickly navigate to the area of interest and speak to it as necessary.

Changing the delivery has the biggest impact on the audience. Think back to your days in the classroom.

When your teacher asked a question, there was a possibility of you getting called on to answer it.

Surely this made you more alert and attentive.

Conversational presenting is a little like this in that it requires just enough participation from the audience to keep them engaged.

By changing the structure of the presentation and the style in which it’s delivered, both presenter and audience are able to overcome a handful of pretty big challenges associated with presenting. Because the audience is being asked to participate in the conversation, they’re more alert and can therefore remain engaged with the material. And because the presenter needs to be able to jump into any part of the story at any time, there’s no script to forget or stumble over.

CHAPTER THREE

The right choice for the modern office.

THE RIGHT CHOICE FOR MODERN OFFICE

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Better your business.

As we move further into an era that sees the first internet-raised generation enter the workforce in massive waves, the shift in communications is increasingly evident. People—no matter audience member, presenter, client, or colleague—want to ask questions and provide their own insights. They want to problem solve and debate. They want their opinions heard and taken into account.

This makes conversational presenting a natural choice for professionals. We’ve spoken to many Prezi users and have found that the benefits of utilizing our approach in everyday business are diverse, but some of our favorites include:

It saves time.

Gone are the days of using filler material in a presentation, such as the dreaded “About Me/Us” slide. When you have the flexibility to ask a boardroom full of executives or potential clients what they want to learn about that day, and continue to use their feedback to navigate through the information you have prepared, you’re only ever going to present what’s needed.

This super-focused approach amounts to a lot of saved time for your audience as well as for you the presenter. And as most of us know by now: time is money.

The presentation is always relevant.

A conversational presentation has enough room for every single little detail you could ever dream of, but doesn’t bind you to sharing it all. Instead, it allows you to be prepared for any level of interest in any topic using the same presentation.

Let’s say that in an effort to gain more budget and buy-in for a particular project, you’ve prepared a presentation for a number of colleagues within your organization. The plan is to deliver it several times over several days to accommodate different teams’ schedules, but what about interests? These are often very specific to department, but nobody

THE RIGHT CHOICE FOR MODERN OFFICE

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wants to put the time into redesigning the same presentation every time they’re about to approach a new group of people.

With conversational presenting, this becomes a non-issue. Simply include all the information needed and let your audience pick and choose what they care most about. You’ll be relevant each and every time without having to do double or triple the work.

This works great for presenting to global teams too, as interests can also be dependent on location.

Nom and Then

My Office

Much like seeing lunch locations in relation to where you are on a map, putting your ideas in context helps paint a clearer picture with your audience.

Showing information in context paints a clearer picture.

Here’s a common scenario: it’s lunch time at the office. You’re not sure what to eat. You pull up a maps service online, type in your work address, and then zoom in to see which tasty options are closest to you. Nothing looks new or exciting, but then a coworker mentions a restaurant you haven’t tried yet. You don’t see it within the two-block radius you were hoping for, so you type the name of the restaurant into the maps service to find it, then zoom out to see how far away it is from your current location. As a next step, you check how long it will take to walk vs. how long it will take in an Uber.

Seeing lunch locations in context like this makes you a well informed—albeit very hungry—person, and a well informed person can be trusted to make the right decision. This is how conversational presenting works to get your ideas across to an audience in an incredibly effective way. When a viewer can compare and contrast different ideas, as well as see how even the smallest details fold into the larger ones, they have a much clearer understanding of the picture as a whole.

THE RIGHT CHOICE FOR MODERN OFFICE

Visual storytelling is more memorable.

At this point, let’s assume you’re convinced conversational presenting is the way to go (woo!) and you’re eager to get started. Before you drop slides directly from PowerPoint into Prezi, know that tweaking your approach to content is required in addition to a change in format and delivery.

After all, how can you expect to have a successful conversation if you’re too busy rattling off bullet points that—impressive as they may be—likely no one will remember?

What many of us know these days as visual storytelling complements conversational presenting perfectly. We’ve got a ton of research to explain why visuals work best in presentations, but the gist of it is simply that our brains are built for them. Between 80 and 90% of the information that our brain processes comes in through our eyes, and almost incredibly, two-thirds of the brain’s electrical activity is dedicated to vision when the eyes are open. In other words, we are hardwired to consume visuals, and our brains have evolved powerful storage capacity for this type of information.

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When translating your content into a conversational presentation, think of what you can condense into quickly digestible visuals. Take projected growth for example. It’s a routinely shared statistic, but typically presented using a graph and squiggly lines that are hard to read from afar. Here’s how that data could look using visual storytelling techniques:

Projecting exponential growth over the next year

50M

12.5M 2014

A visual like this is perfect for a map-like delivery style. See how the size of the illustrations communicates growth without even having to look at the actual numbers? It requires very little processing or mathematics to comprehend, and is easier to remember than plots on an axis. Having this image on the screen as you chat with your client will communicate your message visually while you communicate it verbally. That’s a double whammy!

2015-2016

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Conclusion.

While conversational presenting is not going to be the right way to go in every single instance, the direction our workforce is moving in will certainly make it the best option more often than not. With a combination of a map-like structure, meaningful movement, and visually appealing content, Prezi makes delivering a presentation that operates like a conversation easier than ever.

We at Prezi are proud to be one of the many companies to bring productivity into the 21st century, and the first to offer a solution that treats presentations as more than just that. Because in business you’re always adapting, and we believe you should have a platform with the flexibility to support you.

Find out more about conversational presenting today by taking a tour of our Prezi Business workshop.