Glad I took the risk of travelling through the snow down to London yesterday to catch Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen fame speaking at the Apple Store on Regent St.

Having watched and read a lot of Garr’s work, I was familiar with some of what he talked about, but there were plenty of new angles which helped me think afresh about how to present. I won’t go over the whole presentation here, as I couldn’t do it justice. Instead I’ll pick out just one really useful metaphor which will hopefully help me cure one of my main presentation weaknesses: preparation time.

I can procrastinate with the best of them, so it was my usual last minute rush to prepare a new lecture I was giving to postgraduates last week. The subject, interpretive policy analysis, was known to me (my choice, in fact) but there’s still a lot of work to be done working out structure, what to include and what to leave out, even before considering any slides. Fact is, I suffer from more than my fair share of the lizard brain.

In discussing preparation, Garr used the metaphor of the tough, sealed PVC box that headphones, remotes etc so often come packaged in which leads to the overwhelming frustration ably demonstrated above by Larry David.

So why do the companies package them that way? Because it’s easy. Or more accurately, it was the easiest thing for *them* to do. If they’d thought very much about their audience (customers), then the company would have realised that using that packaging would probably hack them off.

It’s easy to underprepare for a presentation. A common way round this is just to tell an audience as much as you know about a subject in the allotted time, especially when you’re immersed in it. That may be easy, but it’s not good for your audience who are subjected to a stream of information displayed on over-stuffed bullet slides. Without a clear structure or, as Garr described it, a ‘presentation arc’ (i.e. moving *from* one idea at the beginning *to* another idea at the end), your audience will either be seething like Larry David or dropping off from yet another case of Death By Powerpoint.

Creativity involves a lot of editing; sometimes it’s painful but removing some of that material you’ve spent hours slaving over is a necessary part of producing clarity in the finished product. I know this from experience but that doesn’t stop it being difficult work which is all too easily put off until the last minute.  That’s OK when it doesn’t affect anyone but yourself but when it comes to presentations, you risk wasting not only your time but that of your audience too, leaving yourself with a room full of Larrys.

Of course to get as good as Garr requires a lot of work but, as he said last night, the key is to focus on the next step and maintain your ‘kaizen’. For me, the next step is to make more time for preparation and sure no Larrys creep into my next presentation.