Ask For Feedback

On Wednesday night, I attended a Demo Night organised by Sandbox. I love these events and specifically the twist that has been given to the traditional process of pitching and demo-ing.

The difference is that after presenting the product and answering Q&As, the presenter states what their biggest challenge is. The groups then discuss solutions and communicate them to the team presenting.

What's so important about this is that it puts the presenter/entrepreneur in a position of asking for feedback and for help. We are all imperfect in our own ways and we need to be open to feedback, other people's suggestions and ideas. We are so used to presenting, pitching and selling our ideas that we forget that sometimes we need to stop talking and just listen. The feedback from this process can help you grow as a person, your company and your product.

Try this for a change. Next time you talk with someone (be it a friend, colleague, stranger or whomever else) about what you are working on, answer all their questions and then lead them towards giving you feedback and state what your biggest challenge is. You never know who holds the answer to your problem, so instead of banging your head against a wall, open up and receive some help.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

The Most Important Element for Engaging Presentations

I did my first presentation in front of a crowd when I was 15. Using an overhead projector, transparencies and pens. The slides were so bad that I had included entire paragraphs of text along some small pictures. My audience was so bored that half of them were falling off their seats.

Fast forward 10 years and after years of trial and error, I finally understood the purpose of slides. To complement the speaker and grab the initial attention of the audience. The only way to do this is by keeping the design of the presentation simple. No complex graphics, no long text. Just a couple of words, a number, an important and simple graph.

You might say that I'm biased because of my love of simplicity and involvement in design. Don't take my word for it, read this article. Vinod Khosla, a long time venture capitalist, also believes that simplicity is key to a successful presentation. So now that any doubt is out of the way, you can move on to simplify your slides.

The key thing to remember is that the slides need to complement what you are talking about. How often they change and what they include is up to you and depends on what you're presenting and the tone. If you want to be funny, use funny pictures that will make people laugh. If you want to be serious, use big clear type and emphasise with bold letters. Keep any graphics clean, simple and minimal. When you practice your speech, if you say "I don't expect you to read the graph/chart/process" (I hear this in most presentations) then remove it and replace it with something clear that makes the point. Data is good, but it's better to understand what you are talking about.

It's important to remember that the audience has come to listen to you, not read slides. Have fun and show them a good time, while communicating your key messages. If you are lucky, they will go away remembering a few nuggets of what you said. If you don't follow the above, then you might as well cancel the presentation and send the slides via email.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

The Lost Art of Presentation Design

If you ask most people, they will say that business presentations are boring, and they are right. The use of software like PowerPoint, default templates and bullet points has led to mundane presentations delivered in a mundane way.

The good news are that there is hope. Any presentation can be redesigned to communicate information effectively and help the speaker engage with the audience. One of the most valuable tools when redesigning a presentation is simplification.

The first thing you need to do when redesigning your presentation, is to identify your core message. You need to gather all the thoughts and ideas that are in your slides and then simplify to understand what the core message is. Once you have it, this needs to be used as the theme for your presentation and you need to keep coming back to it.

When it comes to changing your slides, remember that simplicity is king. Having a lot of information on a slide confuses and forces people to read instead of listen and engage. You need to keep your words to a minimum, use graphics and images whenever possible and never EVER use bullet points.

If you just apply the second part and change your slides to be clean and with less information, you will already have made a great progress. It's important to understand that the audience has come to listen to you and not read a few slides. If it was for the latter, you could have sent them as a PDF and not do the presentation at all. Using simplicity will help you deliver your message effectively and engage with your audience.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis