Effective Technical Presentations

Speaking in front of a group and presenting technical information is a talent most managers, scientists, engineers, and technicians need, but few people are trained in this most critical area. The results are predictable: Most people hate speaking in front of a group, your work may not get the recognition or understanding it deserves, and management, peers, subordinates, and sometimes even customers miss opportunities to incorporate your ideas.

Effective Technical Presentations is a comprehensive and intensive 1-day training program that presents the essential elements of preparing and presenting effective presentations. The course focuses on the mechanics of a successful presentation, including such topics as defining presentation content, establishing audience expectations, organizing the presentation, gaining and maintaining audience rapport, and overcoming speaker’s fear. The course includes a roadmap for becoming an effective speaker and developing dynamic presentations.

This course is aimed at personnel in all organizational levels who give presentations to clients, subordinates, peers, and managers..

Related Courses

Prerequisites

The course assumes basic familiarity with MS PowerPoint.

Customize It!

• Add a “workshop day” to the course to allow the participants to work together to analyze presentation issues specific to your organization. The workshop day can be scheduled a few weeks after the course to allow time for applying the technologies presented in class under an experienced practitioner’s guidance.

• Schedule post-class follow-up consultation for ongoing presentations improvement.

Learn How To

• Develop effective technical presentations.

• Objectively identify presentation improvement opportunities.

• Overcome speaker’s fear.

• Identify and meet presentation requirements from logistical, content, and time perspectives.

Who Should Attend

Plant managers, manufacturing managers, managers, manufacturing engineers, quality engineers, program managers, and others responsible for presenting technical information.

Course Outline

• Session 1: Presentations Overview. Presentation purposes. Presentation challenges. Audience expectations and speaker challenges. Extemporaneous speaking versus formal presentations. Anticipating likely questions. Exercise.

• Session 2: Presentation Organization. Message definition. The three-step presentation process. Defining audience expertise and adjusting the level of detail. Chronological, cost, complexity, and significance approaches. Meeting your allotted time. Rehearsing.

• Session 3: Chartsmanship. Fonts. Word charts. X-Y, bar, Pareto, histogram, and pie charts. Flow charts. Tables. Digital images. Mixing text and graphics. Exercise.

• Session 4: Digital Images and Movies. Digital photography. Exposure and composition. Macro photography. Special effects. Movies. Importing pictures and movies.

• Session 5: Gaining and Maintaining Audience Rapport. Speaker credibility. Audience expectations and your professionalism. Eye contact and volume. Reading, memorization, and audience involvement. Body language. Gaging audience reaction. Using humor. Fielding questions. Exercise.

• Session 6: Overcoming Laliaphobia. Laliaphobia’s root causes. Material familiarity as a means of overcoming speaker’s fear. Rehearsal as a means of overcoming speaker’s fear. Use of presentation aids as a means of overcoming speaker’s fear. Responding to the audience expert. Welcoming questions as opportunities.

• Session 7: Logistics. Arriving early and meeting your time constraints. Coordination with other speakers. Presentation constraints, room challenges, and seating. Using pointers, handouts, presentation aids, props, questionnaires, and samples. Chart timing, backgrounds, transitions, and audio effects. Hazards.

• Session 8: Course Review and Critique. Topic review. Course evaluation and feedback.

How You Will Learn

A seasoned author and technical writer with 20 years of experience teaching engineers to write effectively will present this course in an interactive lecture and workshop format.

Along with the lectures, we use exercises, puzzles, case studies, and interesting group activities to enrich the instruction and emphasize the essential points.

You will receive a printed Participant Handbook that includes all materials presented in class, which will help you remember and retain what you learned and apply it on your job.

You will learn key concepts from theoretical and practical perspectives.

Our Expertise

We're experts in this field with real world experience teaching engineers and other technical people how to write. We know the drill because we've personally managed engineering, manufacutring, and quality assurance organizations and we've taught this topic at the University level. We know what works, what does not, and how to implement changes that make a real difference in how your organization communicates.

The above training can be customized to meet your requirements. Please call us at 909 204 9984 or contact us via email.