Presentations for Librarians

Moving...

2008-06-06T09:39:00.002-05:00

Hi all,

The Presentations for Librarians blog has moved to the WordPress platform. All content from this blog has been migrated there.

Please visit http://presentations4librarians.wordpress.com for the new blog. Content from my website (www.hilyer.info/presentations) will also be migrated to the WordPress site.

See you later!

Lee

Thought for the day...

2008-04-23T11:28:00.002-05:00

"Create presentations that have more in common with a documentary film than an overhead transparency. "

Source: Carmine Gallo, "Rethinking the presentation." BusinessWeek. April 4, 2008.

Slides with pictures are remembered better (the picture superiority effect) and are also more efficiently processed in working memory than slides with lots of text.

Ditch the text, people, and fill your slides with photos. Don't know where to get good photos? Try the Stock Exchange or Flickr. Both sites are FREE!!

Contributors to Stock Exchange license their images but the terms are usually quite liberal, especially for presentations. Flickr lets its users designate their photos as Creative Commons and in fact, many of my own photos are free for you to use in your presentations.

Visit my Flickr page and feel free to download and use any of my images in your own presentations. Enjoy!

Peace out,

Lee

Honored and Humbled

2008-03-14T09:51:00.003-05:00

I've written three books over the past six years, and as a librarian, I think the most exciting part is to see when libraries buy them and add them to their collections. My latest, Presentations for Librarians, is now owned by 23 libraries and counting around the world (according to Worldcat). They include places like Singapore, Auckland (New Zealand), Knoxville, Tarragona (Spain) and the British Library in London.

Wow. To think that a guy from Texas (me) has managed to write some books that have ended up in some of the world's greatest libraries is just amazing. I am blessed to have been given the opportunity to share with my colleagues, and am humbled that people at these libraries have selected my books to add to their collections.

So I want to send a big 'thank you' to everyone and every library who has bought copies of my books and thank you for letting me share with you.

Have a great weekend!

Peace,

Lee

Thought for the day...

2008-02-13T15:44:00.004-06:00

Written on the staircase in the Design Museum in London:

"Information is only useful when it can be understood."--Muriel Cooper

I love this quote and it sums up what I am trying to change about library presentations. Sure, we probably provide oodles of information to our audiences when we present, but are they really understanding what we say?

Research tells us that mental effort is required for processing of information into long-term storage. Mental effort is elicited through "working" with the material: class/presentation activities, reading and reflection, synthesis of the information presented with existing information, etc. This process takes time and structure, hence the reason that elementary school teachers, for example, in addition to lecturing on multiplication and long division, have the students practice worksheets, use math manipulatives (Unifix cubes, for those in the know), play games, sing songs and more, all in an effort to have students not only receive the information, but understand it.

Yet somehow between school and the real world, we've forgotten that people need time and practice with new information in order to be able to truly understand and make use of it. Yes, adult learners do differ from younger children and adolescents, but the fundamentals of human learning don't differ in the need for time to process information and to "roll it around" in your head to make sense of something.

Presentations of the conference variety often are full of information, yet the audience has little time or opportunity to actually work with the new information and integrate it into their own knowledge. You can help your audience by reducing the amount of content covered and focusing on only the most important points. You can also help by providing explicit guidance and "scaffolding" for your audience.

For example, if you have four points to cover, give the audience a list of your four points at the beginning of your presentation, expand on your points during your presentation, then reiterate them again at the close of your talk. Repeating yourself feels stupid, I know, but repetition is key to encoding some information into long-term memory. You can also use a technique known as "signaling," where you explicitly tell the audience that, in essence, "this is an important point."

There are many other techniques you can use to foster not just a grand and totally useless "data-dump" presentation, but one in which your audience leaves with some "understanding" about your topic. I'll post about those in the future.

And please, if you're reading the blog, I'd love to get your comments and feedback!

Peace out,

Lee

Why presentations by librarians often stink...

2008-01-29T09:02:00.000-06:00

While preparing for a workshop with other librarians in my area, we've been discussing how much material to cover in our allotted time period (3 hours). I've been arguing that "less is more," to quote Mies van der Rohe, when it comes to how much material to present and suggesting that we seriously curtail the number of topics to cover.

Audience members are not empty vessels waiting to be filled up during a presentation--they want to learn something, and attempting to cram anything and everything into a short time period is not going to be successful for either the audience or for the presenters.

One of the librarians indicated that they only needed thirty minutes for a particular topic since they could "...talk really fast." Sigh. How much do you think the audience is going to learn if the presenter is speaking rapid-fire and not giving the audience time to process the information presented? (The answer is: pretty much next to nothing.).

Our workshops and conferences are not going to improve if we don't start putting the needs of our audience first, instead of our needs or the "needs" of the material.

Presenters and instructors need to vigorously edit their presented content, and I mean vigorously. Edit, edit and then edit some more. Present only the most important information during the presentation, then provide additional detail in handouts for the audience to take away and read at their leisure. Believe me, you will be doing your audience and yourself a favor.

You can read Chapter 1 of my book for more information about how people learn (and I mean really learn), or you can read Cliff Atkinson's excellent book on PowerPoint presentations, now in its second edition. (Honestly, if you read nothing else, read Atkinson's book - it will change your presentation style forever.)

Bottom line: a presentation or a workshop is not an opportunity for you to "talk really fast" and slam the audience with reams of content. It is an opportunity for you to help your audience learn the basics of your presented content, and to inspire them to seek out more information on it, either through handouts, a post-presentation website, or a blog.

Now, go forth and present!

Lee

Found in the blogosphere...

2007-12-07T14:51:00.000-06:00

I recently set up a "subscription" in del.icio.us to track entries with the tag 'presentation.' As the semester winds down here and our students bury their heads in their books and notes for their final exams, I started looking at some of the entries.

Scott Elias posted an entry on his blog about presentating and included a superb annotated PDF of his presentation. I don't know the guy, but I'd like to thank him for his contribution to improving presentations for educators.

It'll take you about 5-10 minutes to go through the presentation. It will be time well-spent.

The blog post is here: http://blog.scottjelias.net/2007/11/presenting_about_presenting.html
and the PDF itself is here: http://blog.scottjelias.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/slides.pdf

Have a great weekend!

Peace out,

Lee

del.icio.us list for Presentations

2007-11-30T13:49:00.000-06:00

Good afternoon!

I've been using del.icio.us for a while and have built up a group of bookmarks related to presentations. You can find it at: http://del.icio.us/lhilyer/presentations.

I'm getting ready to update it with links from my upcoming book, but it's got a few goodies in it already. Likewise, feel free to add me to your del.icio.us network (click the network link in your del.icio.us account, then type "lhilyer" and click Add. Then, whenever I add some new links on presentations, you'll get them also.

Have a great day!

Lee

P.S. Found this great blog post about color palettes based on "Old Masters:" http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/06/20/color-inspiration-from-the-masters-of-painting/. I've mentioned Colourlovers.com before - it's a fantastic site.

Presentations for Librarians - Coming Soon!

2007-11-12T08:37:00.000-06:00

After months of writing and more months of editing, adjusting images, and working hard to make everything as best it can be, my book, Presentations for Librarians, is soon on its way to the printers and then to a store/website/library near you!

Unlike the usual how-to-do-a-presentation book, I have attempted to give you some background into how people learn, and how to use that information to craft more effective, learner-centered presentations. The book brings together aspects of cognitive information processing (CIP) theory, cognitive load theory, Mayer's theory of multimedia learning, and instructional design theory into a theory-based approach to creating and delivering presentations. View the table of contents or visit my website for more presentation ideas.

Lee

Are your presentations "sticky?"

2007-11-09T16:51:00.001-06:00

Readers of the new book by the Heath brothers, Made to Stick, will know what I mean by a "sticky" idea: one that people remember. Think of all the advertising slogans and urban legends you hear/see once and never forget.

Ask yourself the same question:
Was my presentation "sticky?" Will people who attended my presentation remember what I told/showed them?

Are you sure about that?

Food for thought on a Friday afternoon...

Peace out,

Lee

Visual Selling, by LeRoux and Corwin

2007-08-08T20:20:00.000-05:00

Scanned an interesting book this past week: Visual Selling: Capture the Eye and the Customer Will Follow by Paul LeRoux and Peg Corwin.

I especially enjoyed reading Chapter 3, "Q&A: Thinking Visually and Verbally in Non-Pitch Situations" as it deals with a difficult topic for presenters: how to elegantly handle the Q&A portion of the presentation. It provides a wealth of details and strategies for a successful conversation with the audience post-presentation.

The recommendations found in Chapter 5, "Eliminating Decks and Delaying Handouts," echo the multimedia principles developed by Dr. Richard Mayer on multimedia learning, and the research on cognitive load conducted by Dr. John Sweller.* While the focus is on business situations, the principles easily fit many common instructional presentation situations.

The book provides ample images demonstrating effective use of visuals and includes some sample presentation scenarios to help you more readily see how their recommendations can be incorporated into your own presentations.

Visual Selling, LeRoux and Corwin
ISBN-10: 0471793612
ISBN-13: 978-0471793618

Best,

Lee

I Love My Presentation Remote

2007-07-31T11:46:00.001-05:00

If you are in the market for a presentation remote, I suggest Logitech's Presenter model. It has a built-in LCD screen and timer functions to keep you on track (set a reminder for yourself at 10 minutes before your time is up), a laser pointer (sigh - don't use it - they're annoying), and a button that does the equivalent of the B key function when running a slide show (i.e., darkening the screen).

Its USB receiver fits neatly into a slot on the back of the remote itself, and it all fits into a nice carrying case. In informal tests in the classroom where I teach most, the range was about 30-40 feet, good enough for most small- to mid-sized presentation venues. No software installation is required, and it worked without intervention from our IT staff - a bonus.

It only works with Windows, but Mac users needn't be jealous - they can use their Apple Remotes to control Keynote presentations.

In today's earlier post, I raved about a presentation I attended. The only minor drawback (not their fault at all) was that the presenter needed to stay close to the podium to advance their slides - with a remote, they would have been completely untethered and free to roam about the room during the presentation.

If you're going on multiple job interviews where you will have to present, why not invest in a presentation remote? If spending a few bucks on a remote helps you make a better impression and land the job, isn't it worth it? Plus you can use it when you deliver presentations at conferences, workshops and in training sessions.

And if you must point at the screen, consider a telescoping pointer. They're cheap, effective, and don't usually annoy your audience.

Now go practice your presentation.

~Lee

Color, Color, Everywhere!

2007-06-15T12:15:00.000-05:00

Today's post is all about color.

Color Symbolism

One way that you can subtly enhance the message of your presentation is through the judicious and intentional use of color. To promote the "feeling" of growth, for example, you might use a green color scheme, since it is representative of nature. For a more serious presentation, you might use grey or navy blue, since they are often found in offices everywhere (look around at the colors of the suits of the men working near you) and it evokes a feeling of seriousness and business confidence.

Every color carries a message; be sure the colors you use in your presentation are reinforcing the message you want to convey and not distracting from it. On my website, you will find a PDF listing some of the most common Western cultural connotations of different colors.

Selecting Harmonious Color Schemes

Do you have trouble creating color schemes? PowerPoint 2007 has many new options for selecting foolproof color schemes, and Adobe has created kuler, which is a nifty, Javascript- and Flash-based application for creating color schemes. Kuler members can download posted color schemes and upload their own for others to use. Schemes can be saved and used in the new CS3 versions of Photoshop, InDesign and the other Creative Suite products. Best of all, it's totally free!

Good Sources of Information

For more information and resources on color, visit the following sites:

http://www.colourlovers.com/ (Learn more about colors and swap and share color palettes)

http://www.mariaclaudiacortes.com/ (Awesome, Flash-based presentation on color symbolism)

http://www.colormatters.com/ (Another excellent resource for color selection)

Have a great day!

Design Inspiration for Your Slides

2007-05-29T11:34:00.000-05:00

I am no artist; that's for sure. I can draw stick figures pretty well, and have managed to draw the same doodle (a vase with some flowers) for about 20 years now, but that's about it as far as my natural drawing talent.

But over the years, looking at design magazines has helped me hone my "design vision," and as I look at billboards and advertisements and other magazines, I get ideas that I can then go and use in my own presentation slides.

The title cards from the trailer for the movie Inside Man, for example, use a black and blue color combination that I really liked and which could be used as a good color combination for slides. Company annual reports are also good sources for slide layout inspiration. Looking at magazines you wouldn't normally pick up, especially ones your audience might be reading, can give you some ideas on how to lay out information on your slides.

My point is that inspiration for spectacular slides is all around you. Don't be afraid to "open" your eyes and see what inspires you and what techniques you can adapt for your own presentations.

A new blog I stumbled upon might also provide you with some graphic inspiration: http://www.beadesigngroup.com/.

Have a great day!

Lee

Can't Wait to Get My Hands On...

2007-05-29T11:31:00.001-05:00

Electric Rain's StandOut presentation software (http://www.erain.com/products/standout/).

This new software, available soon (I hope) for Windows Vista, makes my inner geek shine. From what I've read and the videos I've seen on their website, it will blow regular PowerPoint presentations away.

Waiting with anticipation...

Lee

Slideshare - Great Place for Ideas

2007-05-18T11:17:00.000-05:00

Hello! Sorry for the egregious delay between posts; I have been finishing up a manuscript and have been locked away with my computer, furiously writing and preparing images. The book, Presentations for Librarians, will be published in October by Chandos. In any case, it's good to be back on the blog.

If you are in need of some fresh ideas for your slide presentations, visit Slideshare(http://www.slideshare.net). It is a site where people can upload and share their presentations with one another.

They recently held a World's Best Presentation Contest and there were some excellent award-winners. I particularly like the first- and second-place winners.

There are some dogs on the site as well - it has some superb examples of what a presentation should NOT be. But learning from bad examples can be just as instructive as learning from good ones.

I am always on the lookout for new ideas for presentations, and Slideshare has quickly become one of the places I look for inspiration.

Have a great weekend!

Lee

Media for Your Presentations

2007-03-15T13:51:00.000-05:00

Creative Commons has a search engine (http://search.creativecommons.org) that allows you to search for media you can download and use in your presentations. Users can search Google, Yahoo, Flickr and other sites to find photos, music, videos and more that can be freely used in your presentations.

Presenters should be aware of BOTH their rights and responsibilities with respect to the copyright status of media materials used in their presentations. You can start with the US Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov) for more information on using copyrighted materials, but check with your own institution's legal department if you're unsure about a particular item you want to use.

In future posts I will add other sites for free media on the web.

Peace out,

Lee

Font Choices

2007-03-09T09:56:00.000-06:00

Greetings all!

I recently attended a very prestigious conference and I can report with confidence, that yes, even Nobel Prize winners could use a little extra help with their presentations. Overall, the quality of speakers was excellent, though I would only give top marks for presentation visuals (i.e., slides) to just two out of the 8 speakers whose presentations I attended.

Note: I will use the terms 'font' and 'typeface' interchangeably, in this post and any others in the future - for our purposes they are essentially the same term.

The most common 'mistake' I observed was poor choice of typeface. One presenter used Papyrus which, in me at least, evokes an exotic, informal and somewhat 'Egyptian' feel. It's perfect for more colorful occasions, but was inappropriate for the content of the presentation.

Coupled with the presenter's use of a parchment-paper background, the typeface contributed to the overall impression of "the past," even though this conference was about the future of libraries. In addition, the typeface, with it's thin lines, was hard to read from the rear of the auditorium, and even the speaker, who lamentably used the slides as a teleprompter, had trouble reading them though they were much closer to them than the rest of the audience.

Another presenter set the text of his slides in Comic Sans, which we have all seen before. What kinds of feelings does this typeface evoke for you? For me, it's "kindergarten" or "elementary school." The concepts of "happy," "informal," and "picnic" also come to mind. I would only use this typeface when I want to invoke those kinds of associations with the content of my presentation (a workshop for elementary school teachers, perhaps, or a presentation to my church committee charged with planning the summer picnic).

Let me point out that there is nothing inherently wrong with either Papyrus or Comic Sans - I have used them in the past and will use them again. The fonts themselves are not the issue (I'm actually quite fond of Papyrus); it is their use (or misuse) that I am concerned about.

Having studied this topic for several years now, I was concerned that my own impressions were too nit-picky, so I double-checked my impressions with several colleagues at this conference - all concurred that there was a disconnect between the impression conveyed by the typeface used and the speaker's topic and/or spoken delivery.

What's the lesson here?

Presenters usually only get one good chance to make an impression on their audience and to communicate a message to them. All elements of your presentation, from the delivery of your spoken remarks to what you wear to the visuals you select should enhance, reinforce or complement the content of your presentation and your intended goal/message. This includes selecting a proper typeface that conveys support for your content or the impression you are trying to create.

Serious subjects need "serious" fonts such as Times New Roman or Palatino Linotype. Presentations about the future at least need a "forward-looking" font, such as the new Calibri (included in Microsoft(r) Office 2007(r)), or Eras Light or Franklin Gothic (included with Microsoft Office 2003(r)).

Bottom Line: Match the typeface to the content of your presentation and the impression you want to convey to the audience. And get a second opinion before you present. Identifying these often nebulous "impressions" is a skill that comes with practice and experience. One good place to get a feel for type "trends" is the FontShop feed (http://www.fontshop.com/fontfeed/).

TIP: To minimize the risk of unintentional font substitution, especially if you will not be using your own computer when presenting, stick to the fonts installed as part of your Microsoft Office installation. You can sometimes embed fonts into your PowerPoint files, but this depends on the font's license, and does not always work well.

Notes:
Papyrus was designed by Chris Costello and is distributed by ITC. Comic Sans was designed by Vincent Connare for Microsoft. Learn more at the Comic Sans Cafe (no kidding) or Ban Comic Sans.

Some of My Favorite Resources

2007-02-22T14:41:00.000-06:00

To get you started, here are a few recommended books:

Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson (ISBN: 0735620520) 2005.
This is a superb book describing an audience-centered approach to creating and delivering PPT presentations that is based, in part, on Richard Mayer's research into multimedia learning. I HIGHLY recommend this book.

Presenting to Win by Jerry Weissman (ISBN: 0130464139) 2003.
Another highly-recommended resource which incorporates best practices and guidelines from broadcast journalism and tv production. Easily read on a cross-country flight and well worth it.

For more on the visual design of your slides, check out:

Before & After Magazine. http://www.bamagazine.com/ Subscription: $24.00/year PDF.
Seriously, whether you are an expert designer or a novice PowerPoint user, each issue of this magazine offers superb ideas for website and print design which (with a little bit of your imagination) can easily be adapted and modified for slide design. (Any of the Before & After books are also useful).

Chuck Green's Ideabook. http://www.ideabook.com/.
Similar in scope and content to Before & After, this is another great resource for getting design ideas that you can apply to your slides.

Enjoy!

Lee

Welcome to the blog!

2007-01-29T21:33:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the Presentations for Librarians blog!

My name is Lee Andrew Hilyer and I am currently finishing up a book on presentations geared specifically towards librarians.

This blog is dedicated to sharing useful tips, relevant research articles and books, and web resources all related to crafting and delivering effective, learner-centered presentations, be they for conference programs or instruction.

Recent research in the field of cognitive psychology has indicated that the way we usually create and deliver our presentations does little to encourage learning and may, in some cases, actually hinder it. Fortunately, there are a growing number of books and resources dedicated to translating those research results into concrete, easy-to-follow guidelines that will improve the learning potential of any presentation. I will be highlighting many of these resources in the book and on this blog.

We can't blame this bad situation on PowerPoint; presenters were using overhead transparencies for years before it came along. So you won't read any Microsoft- or PowerPoint-bashing on this blog. PowerPoint is a tool like any other and can be used incorrectly.

Why librarians, specifically? First, I am one. Second, librarians, especially in academic libraries, more and more are being called upon to teach a diverse set of skills and software packages, from Internet browsers to Word, and from Mathematica to PowerPoint. Additionally, librarians are helping to develop information-literate students and must go further than ever before in helping students learn how to critically evaluate information sources.

PowerPoint presentations are undoubtedly a pervasive part of this landscape, yet the presentations we create may not be doing their job, namely informing an audience or helping them to acquire new knowledge and skills. As library instruction time is generally severely limited, it is even more incumbent upon librarian presenters to craft presentations that will support learning, rather than hinder it.

And third, just think about the last conference you attended and the quality of the presentations you saw. Were you riveted and did you actually learn something, or did you lose interest somewhere along the way and begin plotting your route through the exhibit hall? If you're honest with yourself, it's probably the latter.

I think we can remedy that situation together.

Talk with you soon,

Lee