Important presentation? Have paper notes of your key points at the podium!

Here’s a copy of my key points from Part 3 of our recent Big Data analytics webcast, “Big Data” on your laptop, fast, informative and at your command.

If you are making an important presentation about an analysis and you haven’t written down your key points on paper, why aren’t you doing this@f1@f2@f3 Make your presentation much less stressful and ensure that you share all of the key points with your audience! I know that we live in the age of Twitter, Facebook and Prezi (all are great products); but there is no substitute for scribbling or printing your notes on paper.

The printed page part is a summary of the points toward the very end of the webcast, this is where I explain the key findings of our brief exploration of the airlines big data dashboard.   The sticky note in the bottom right is the overall flow of the dashboard exploration for the video.

Notice that brevity is key for your podium notes.   Do NOT try to write down sentences to say on stage.   If you feel the need to do this, then please consider rehearsing the presentation either alone or with a friendly colleague.   There is no presentation as boring as someone reading their “script” off their stage notes.

If you can’t do this because you aren’t certain of your key points, then you have an even bigger problem. Perhaps that is the point, all of your work is inconclusive. Then make recommendations for possible next steps or what this means for your audience. More than likely, you are having difficulty verbalizing the key findings, spend some time jotting them down and greatly improve the quality of your presentation.

Cheers,
Stephen McDaniel