By Susan de la Vergne Technical presentations are fabulous examples of public speaking! Engineering and tech presenters are funny, concise, and engaging. Most of them can’t wait to grab a microphone, fire up their succinct, well-designed PowerPoint slides and launch into an hour or two of riveting information transfer!
By Susan de la Vergne Brace yourself. I'm going to make a shocking recommendation about how to prepare slides for technical presentations. Here goes: Don't use design templates. Ever. You know the ones I mean, those decorative templates in PowerPoint and other slide products with the colored frames, borders and bars, and the dots and doodads in the corner. They're a terrible idea! Why? Because design templates detract from your presentation rather than improve it.
By Susan de la Vergne At the gym, from my vantage point bouncing on an elliptical machine, I take an inventory of messages. That is, I look around to see how many ideas, products, and people are trying to get my attention while I am trying (somewhat in vain) to mind my own business.
by Susan de la Vergne Imagine you’ve been invited to a presentation by a molecular biologist who is planning to tell you, in some detail, about the life cycle and behavior patterns of bacteria, describing research about the ways in which bacteria operate both individually and collectively.