community youtube site so go over there subscribe like click the bell you know what to do on youtube i hope so let's also make sure give it one more minute maybe um just let everybody know this session is being recorded and will be available um in probably a few moments on the upcoming link that i'm going to be putting into the chat window if there's ever any questions later you can always go and post a question there but the playback and the recording will be on this community block all right i'm not seeing anyone we've got some number of people chuck you want to uh go ahead and get started i think so so we start on time and on time that's one of my big things that i've got in this deck so yes let's get started let me know when you hit record i i am recording oh we are recording okay well great start we're after a great start hello everybody and welcome to my top 10 presentation tips to help you be more effective in your presentations this is a cut down version of a two-day workshop so i'm going to try and cram my favorite bits of this into 30 minutes so apologize if it's moving along very very quickly my name is chuck tomasi senior developer evangelist at service now i have been presenting for over 40 years and proof of that is in one of the slides coming up right up you know what this is probably a better time to do my introduction slide so let me do a quick screen share and get that started for you so i will share primary screen and present here's another tip when presenting always present in presentation mode don't don't go and show things in edit mode use you use that screen real estate effectively there's a freebie for you so as i mentioned my name is chuck tomasi i have been at servicenow for about 10 years customer for a couple of years before that this is surprisingly not going to be about service now i've got some other skills in the bag and lisa said can you share some non-servicenow thingies with us and i said absolutely so i'm going to share my top 10 tips to help you become a better presenter whether this is in person virtually there's all kinds of things in here and as proof that i have been doing this for a while this is an image of me presenting um something to a scuba instructor training course this was obviously a comedy parody bit from 1979 i think i was all of about 14 years old you can do the math and figure out how old i really am but i was taking a complex physics topic and uh making light of it so if you uh are a diver have fun with that and if you see that kid let me know what happened to him i think he turned out all right so let me start with the two things you must know in order to do an effective presentation this may sound obvious but it's really important especially if you're using someone else's deck you need to know the topic before we did this lisa asked me would you be willing to present and i said sure what are we presenting on so that i had some alignment of what the expectation was know what the topic is and you'll find yourself doing the right thing otherwise you're going to find yourself playing a game we call powerpoint karaoke where you see a slide you make up the ti the content that goes with it and it's a it's a fun game but not good in a professional setting the other thing you must know is the purpose of your presentation why are you doing this yeah i just went out at 1205. oh i think we got to meet somebody so understand are you trying to inspire motivate call to action elicit an emotional response why are you doing this and those two together will greatly help what is the subject that's your topic i'm just going to go over these real quick because i already said them and what are you trying to convey and then of course what are the desired outcomes what is the purpose of doing this second hot tip it's all about the audience you may actually recognize some people in this picture that was from knowledge a couple of years ago ask yourself if i were in the audience what's in it for me oh good old wifm my favorite radio station what's in it for me and what level of interaction are you looking for are you looking for q a in real time are you looking to save it for the end how much background information do they have do they need if you're walking into a customer for example or you are the customer understand do i need to start at ground zero is this an area of experts that i can already skip over that stuff so at it's all about the audience it's not about you the presenter it's not about how funny or how good you look it's it's really for them those attributes can be used to make an effective message but understand what that message is well i gotta build out on here let's do that uh what's the size of the audience i forgot about that understand are you are you going to need helpers when we do knowledge in real time in like knowledge labs we need gurus there's hundreds of people in the room i can't stop and answer every question or solve every wi-fi issue if i'm the presenter i need to keep moving with the content to keep the presentation on schedule so that also makes a big difference i already talked about the level of interaction mostly be adaptable you may come in with a certain expectation of what this presentation is about and find that that's not the exact climate had to do that a number of times over the few decades and make an adjustment you go you know what the slide deck isn't going to work but i can adapt and talk to you about that message so good rule of thumb focus on those outcomes now let's talk about timing this is one of my biggest pet peeves because it's often done poorly the first thing is do you know what the duration of your presentation is lisa gave me 30 minutes here i need to keep it to 30 minutes if we had these all back to back my duration may have to be adjusted if somebody else is running late your biggest question is how long should you have if lisa says 30 minutes and how long do i really have if we didn't get started until 10 minutes past the hour now i have 20 minutes and i need to be adaptable i need to adjust that because it's my professional responsibility to get the schedule back on track so many people walk in and go i've got a 30 minute presentation i'm going to take 30 minutes and they often take longer so now we're even further behind now you know i'm passionate about this because it's really irritating the easiest way to do this is start on time and on time for a nine o'clock meeting this this is whether or not you're doing a presentation or at all if you're running a meeting or if you've got an engagement or you're setting something up start on time on time for a nine o'clock meeting means start at nine so many times we get to these things whether it's virtual or in person and the people who show up on time or even a couple of minutes early now have to wait when the leader says let's give the others a couple of minutes that is a disrespectful remark for the people who showed up on time our training team has a phrase they like to say don't punish the punctual okay let's encourage effective behavior if you're late you missed learn to be on time next time now i know they're always extenuating circumstances if you're expecting the ceo to walk in the room and they're not and they're a key player in this yes you have to be adaptable but let's face it if it's your team or your presentation start on time there's a lot you can do to control that set those expectations and the next time people will be on time because they know you start at the top of the hour and keep an eye on the clock one thing that i often forget in longer presentations things that go 90 minutes or more take a break i build an all-day agenda for a workshop and i always forget to put in the breaks and people say uh can we can we take a bio break because i'm so into the content then i forget to slot those in so 10 15 minutes here and there and again adjust as needed the other thing about effective time management is end on time and on time for a 60 minute meeting does not mean you have all 60 minutes to talk you have about 50 to 55 minutes or for a 30 minute thing end at 25 minutes so people have the chance to get to the next meeting on time early take a bio break check their email get to that on time and if they're late then it's their own fault right so you can be part of a larger equation by ending a little bit early and ending on time those are my big big points about that let's talk about uh a topic i like to call knowing your ship with a p knowing your ship you need to know what's going on and what your awareness is this is a big topic um if you're on stage or on camera knowing where to stand and where not to even in a room where you've got a small group and a podium things like don't stand in front of the projector no one wants to read excel numbers all over your face okay you're in the way and it's hard to see the audience for you you got a light shining in your face you can move across the screen okay transition but avoid pacing things like that uh understanding the seating there are times when you need to set up for a classroom style where people are at tables with laptops there are times when you don't need a desk at all there are times you need round tables and for example if you're doing an all-day workshop that can make a huge impact depending on what type of content you are presenting or you want how you want the audience to interact with each other understand your av requirements do you need two projectors do you need microphones what's the size of the venue how many people are you addressing do you need roaming microphones for the audience so that perhaps people on the remote side can hear those questions i'll get to that at the end and it never hurts to inspect ahead of time if it's a new venue you haven't been to before perhaps the night before or a few hours learn the av people's names when we do servicenow user group meetings i show up at least an hour ahead of time so i know what the venue is who the av person is who the hospitality person how can i contact them if i need new batteries or projector isn't working we need an adapter that leads to a more effective presentation because the last thing you want to be doing is walking in at 10 a.m for your 10 am presentation and wasting the first 15 minutes looking up adapters and seeing if somebody has something and it's just that's not good be prepared and go for it if you are co-presenting like you see wendy lee and joe davis doing here from knowledge19 that introduces a whole another dynamic that uh i i'm not going to get into but understand how that's going to go rehearsals are your friend in that case all right let's talk about our friend info technology real quick my biggest point here is understand your hardware and know how to use it before you get up there there's a lot of people that don't know how to run a clicker because it's borrowed do you need a clicker so you can walk away from the podium that kind of thing do you need a projector have you got a projector there's a lot of times where i i purchased a cheapo projector for my own and have a clicker that i travel with depending on where how far i have to go so that i have a backup plan which is coming up do you need internet do you have internet do you need to bring your own hotspot microphones very key important thing i've got an off screen microphone here that is a specialized one for this to enhance the audio quality so you don't hear that big empty zoom echo room meeting because i wanted to give you the best audio presentation for this and trust me i tried five different microphones before i settled on this one same thing with software do you know how to run the presentation if you are running a powerpoint as i mentioned at the top of this be sure it's in presentation mode not in editing mode so that people are seeing the right screen know how to switch screens i've seen so many people present but they're in that presenter view mode where you're seeing the the the slide preview you're saying that seeing the next slide and the build out and the show notes and the slides along the bottom like that's not effective use of the screen that's great for you the presenter there's an icon up there that says switch displays if you're wrong okay it swaps them around knowing little things like that can be a huge help to how your message is received and let's face it we're here to exchange information and to get a message across if you're using zoom or webex or whatever understand how to use that and understand how to do the like the default mute attendees if you've got more than about 10 attendees when attendees join mute them by default always or can they even unmute themselves understanding little features like that so you don't have to spend five minutes ten minutes going if you're not talking could you mute please please mute if you're not if you're not presenting that gets old really fast and it consumes a lot of precious time uh if you're doing a powerpoint please be aware of like image licensing you can't just go to google and grab an image and stick in your powerpoint you could get in trouble for that so you notice here i'm using a default clipart that our branding department says that's okay to use and i've been using my own personal images that i took with my own camera or phone for these okay test test test you'll be in a lot better shape so to avoid risk practice practice practice ask yourself all the time what could go wrong with my presentation what if the projector doesn't work what if the wi-fi isn't working do you have a backup plan a a plan b a plan c this could be bringing your powerpoint on a usb drive in case you're uh you can't get your cloud version of it just little things like that i mean i've even resorted to times when i've had paper copies of what i'm looking for what i'm going to be presenting in case the projector dies like you know what these are visual aids they're aiding me in my message i'm just going to present anyway so having that what if mentality as you're presenting before you present i know it sounds like i'm a paranoid freak but i've seen all of this happen at some point and you don't want to be caught going well i don't have my power points so i have nothing to talk about right that's just battle bad idea another one of my top 10 is the lisa and i were just having a discussion about this the font size and now i can't say that word with a straight face anymore lisa it's actually the typeface when you are presenting sharing a screen especially sharing a screen this is too small this is 100 of a servicenow instance on a chrome browser on a mac and if you've got one of those super wide super sized beautiful monitors and you share i can't read it you have to zoom in you have to zoom zoom zoom in i mean really seriously look at this and say to yourself what if somebody was looking at this on their mobile device would they even have half a prayer of seeing what i'm even pointing at okay so zoom in this is the same screen zoomed into 125. better still a little tough on mobile i might even um up this to 150 granted there are times when the ui layout starts to get a little wonky and you may have to back that off so make it easy for the person on the other side to see your content zoom in those browsers make the powerpoint typeface font as big as you can until you think it's ridiculous and then it's about right okay that's that's my message uh again this is from a two-day workshop so the layout kind of gets a little weird there are whole sections of this uh this is from a list of 20 other top tips but be open to the audience my key here is don't turn your back to the audience if you do you've just disengaged them you shouldn't need to look at the screen for any reason you should be able to glance at your notes and be practiced and know what your message is when this slide came up i went up thing i know what i'm going to talk about for this slide so face the audience if you're doing a web conference like this or a webinar look at the camera it's a very tricky skill to learn took me years to figure this out but it you may even want to paste a photo of somebody behind or below the picture so you feel like you're talking with a friend or a family member instead of just this black circle like hal from 2001 space odyssey you can you there's little tricks you can do to keep engaged with the camera because when i look at the camera i'm looking at you on screen and it looks like we're having a face-to-face conversation if i've got a monitor off to the side and i'm glancing over there i'm not paying attention to you anymore and it's less engaging and my message isn't as effective so little tips like that can go a long way i think i've mentioned this at least twice already but practice practice practice and review i will watch this video after it's done recording and i will find things that i want to improve for the next time and make a little note about hey do this stop doing that that would be nice you'll probably find more as you start out presenting and look at these and go oh my gosh what happened here uh i i go back to some of my older videos and go huh it's like it's like programming skills right you look at your old code and go gee i wish i could clean that up but i don't have the time just carry those forward take one or two things to your next presentation and try to do that and practice and as you practice maybe it's saying um a lot or you know or like and you catch these work on practicing those out and soon you'll find that they're gone or you've adapted a new behavior that becomes much more effective okay this one is really hard to do without doing it what doing exactly what it says but if all you are there to do is read slides and your slides are all wordy and have no pictures the audience doesn't need you they will say next time just email me the powerpoint deck so please don't read the slides word for word paraphrase inject stories put some images on there whatever it takes to help you get a stronger message because as soon as i put this slide up you read the slide i know you did but you also have an audio component and that's me speaking there's also another video visual component of me and the camera so leverage those to make a stronger message otherwise just email me the powerpoint because i don't need you i'll read the slide i'll read the speaker notes if they're there if you've got speaker notes great do that too all right one of my favorites turn off those stupid notifications i have actually seen somebody stop in the middle of a presentation and respond to a slack message yes it really happened i was like blown away that was my favorite so far and all the things i've seen on that mail pop-up you know as soon as i install outlook or have something i turn that thing off i don't need to know every time i get a new email appointments yes email no know how to turn off notifications on your desktop disable them temporarily for a mac that's a command click on the notification icon in the upper corner i can't remember what it is for windows i apologize somebody can probably contribute that answer for your mobile devices mute turn off the device do not disturb whatever it takes to shut that thing up because if i set this on vibrate and it's on the desk you will hear it through the whole presentation it's distracting it's annoying and again your message is not effective it's not it's you're drawing the audience away from that so turn on don't be that guy i love this slide yeah and how about hiding the doc there's something on the bottom of that screen that i can't see so learn how to hide that display maximize your screen real estate make sure that people see what they're supposed to see instead of going oh i see you runs vmware and slacking what's that icon next to powerpoint i don't recognize that that's where my mind goes as a tech person but i should be paying attention to something else that they're displaying not what tools they use and how do they use them and what what's up on the top menu bar that next to the clock that with that dot icon i don't recognize that i might go check that out right now as a bonus tip covered a lot of material as a bonus tip remember there are remote people especially if you're doing this in real life and remotely so many times especially this is this is pre-covered but it's going to happen again i know it is so many times we've been in what we call our tois where our support people get up and tell us about what's coming in the next software release this is going to happen very very soon for paris and i am always consuming this on the remote end there at the podium they're talking to 30 40 people live in the audience and what happens is they'll step away from the microphone and i can't hear them so i have to slack somebody who's in the room and say can you tell tony to step back to the podium so we can hear him then they come back and they wander off again because they're pointing at something on the screen which is 15 feet away not good remember there are people out there somebody in the audience will ask a question can't hear it through the podium microphone so repeat the question it's just good etiquette that there are people out there on the phone or on a webex or on something you may have experienced this in a conference room setting as well whole bunch of people sitting around that speaker or microphone in the middle of the table and somebody's doing this eating chips whatever and and you know it's it's absolutely no impact to the people in the room but it is devastating to people that are not in the room trying to hear trying to see whatever it is remember if there are remote people out there they are very important and ask them periodically do you have any questions did that make sense engage them so that they are not off checking facebook twitter email that kind of thing that's that's it if you want to be on my uh do not watch list these are the top 10 mistakes according to me and you'll see a lot of common themes in the what to do that fall apart here number one presenting an editing mode doing demos in that tiny font facing away from the audience lack of practice which leads to lack of confidence which leads to you know low nervous how do you get confidence you practice and you get feedback it works it really does reading the slide bullets don't do it all of those come down lack of confidence notifications turn those things off ignoring the remote people that'll drive me nuts and i will constantly be on slack with somebody in the room to say could you get the person to stop eating their lunch next to the microphone or fumbling with their laptop boring power points how do you get power points not boring less text more picture more story more engagement that kind of thing don't just read them to me and starting and ending late will drive me bananas as it does everybody i'm not unique in this situation but if you avoid these things and find ways from the previous slides to avoid them you will be much much more effective at your presentations so that is all i have for slideware and if anybody has any additional questions i would be willing to entertain them really quickly let me stop the screen share do we have any questions lisa i'm not seeing one on the chat yet but everyone does have the ability to unmute themselves so you may go ahead and do that or you can go ahead and type in um on the chat window i'm also going to just check uh the community uh oh and lisa had a good one also hide the bookmarks in your browser whatever you can do to maximize that screen real estate and it's a privacy thing now i really don't need to see where you get your pharmaceuticals from it might be a bookmark on your browser bar but you know that's that's not pertinent information and it's distracting let's see he wants to know how do you do the green circle mouse over a link that green circle mouse overlink i've got a couple of ways to do that i people have seen that in the past um if you look for cursor locator or mouse cursor locator there are free and and pay for apps i think i spent two dollars on the latest one because the old one doesn't work well with catalina on my mac so you can you can find them they're very easy and very very effective this morning before i started i lost my cursor on my dual displays i could not find it so with a hotkey you can engage it and say when you're doing demos very effective way to say look here in the upper right i'm going to click the question mark icon and boom this big green circle comes to help draw the viewer's attention up there very easy to do but i think i've used three or four of them over the years just look for mouse locator my cursor locator you should be able to find something very easily good tip i might use that one okay uh terry had given the uh the uh information on how to turn alert on or off in windows select file uh then options then mail and then under message arrival select or clear the display um the desktop alert check box and then select okay there you go that would work for mail but there's going to be other notifications from your browser from desktop alerts are very very common these days and very useful i'm not going to bash them but we need to know how to set them aside i turn mine off not just for presentations but when i need focus time i don't need slack messages interrupting me while i'm trying to record a video or write a script or any of my other daily task jobs i go heads down i close out the distractions of the world as much as possible and that helps me focus so just learning how to turn those notifications on and off can be bigger than just presenting we have one more minute before we wrap up so that you're not late for your next um appointment we learned that today uh do you have any any more questions or um again if you come up with any questions please do post them on the community link that i properly provided secondly so i so thank you all very much for that uh anything else because we're about to wrap up don't say anything but thank you everybody for attending i hope you have a wonderful knowledge 2020 digital experience and look forward to hearing your comments all right have a great knowledge bye-bye thank you thank you