Presentation Skills

Being a presenter at SolidWorks World is not that big a deal if you have some experience with public speaking. If you are a bit shaky or you just like to pick up some suggestions, read on.

First, everybody says they hate powerpoint. You don’t have to hate powerpoint to give presentations. Just don’t depend on it. The powerpoint file is not your “presentation”. The presentation is a performance of the visual presentation of information, your spoken words and personality, along with the SolidWorks or other technical data you show. Some people say that your technical data is only worth 5% of your entire presentation, but I think that’s BS. If your tech data stinks, doing everything else correctly won’t save you.

I use powerpoint as an outline. It keeps you on track, or helps you get back on track. I use links to external data like SW files. Visuals in the powerpoint are necessary to give each slide a focus. Using animations or videos along with your powerpoint and live SolidWorks is a great option.

You’re supposed to use the special templates for the SWWorld presentation, but I generally don’t. Sometimes the SWWorld ppt templates are too distracting, and take away from your material. I don’t think homogenizing your data to look like everyone elses improves it any unless it wasn’t very good to start with.

Still, if you are going to customize your ppt background,  be careful. It’s easy to look like an amateur. I generally make low contrast fuzzed out backgrounds with neutral colors and some sort of a separator at the top for page headings.

Remember people are really there to see your SolidWorks skills, not your ppt skills. SHOW SOLIDWORKS RUNNING. Don’t do everything canned. I watched in horror one time as the lead engineer of a reseller did a 4 hour What’s New presentation without opening the SW software even once. It was awful. He was very proud of himself for the extraordinary use of technology. Don’t be a dumbell.

Minimize effects. Sound in particular can often backfire on you.

Move around on the stage. If you sit down and hide behind the dais and drone, people are less likely to be excited by your material, even if its really great.

Finally, after SolidWorks World, make sure that people have access to your files. SolidWorks sometimes tries to prevent non-attendees from gaining access to presentation files. I think this is bogus. “Community” is about bringing people together, but SolidWorks often tries to divide people. Don’t let this happen. If you send me your files, I will post them.

Anyway, below are some YouTube links that I thought were either fun or informative about the general topic of technical presentations.