Presentation Lessons from Comedians

10 Computer

A MODNART

P u b l i s h e d b y t h e I E E E C o m p u t e r S o c i e t y

You’re sitting in yet anotherinterminable conferencesession. Man, this chair getsmore uncomfortable by themillisecond. Who’s that

over there? He looks like Mike Meyersfrom this angle. Or maybe Mini Me.What’s that interminable droningsound? Oops, that’s the speaker goingon and on about … whatever his topicis. You can’t remember—your mindhas been wandering for the past 10minutes.

You slide back into your reverie andidly wonder if it’s true that your mem-ory gets worse as you age and whetherthere’s anything to the folk wisdomthat says you’re okay as long as youcan remember what you ate for dinnerin the past week. I think I had grilledsalmon a week ago. Or was it that youhad to remember for 10 days? Uh oh,I can’t quite recall. That can’t be good.

But suddenly your attention isdrawn back to the speaker, eventhough you can’t quite put your fingeron why. Something about his cadence,or pitch, or the way he paused andleaned away from the podium. Youcan just sense that he has momentarilydiverged from his planned course andis about to extemporize.

If there’s going to be anything mem-orable from this talk, it will be now,when the speaker is making remarksoff the cuff. The earlier part of the talkcould have been a prerecorded audio

track, but this part is real, immediate,full-bandwidth. The speaker is operat-ing at his peak communications capac-ity, and the audience senses that andreacts accordingly.

If you’ve ever attended a musicrecital by a particularly gifted artist, ora theatrical production in which thecast was having a great day, you’ve feltthat same connection—a sense thatthere are higher planes of communica-tion between human beings that wesometimes glimpse but don’t often feel.

Comedians live or die by their abil-ity to fully capture their audience’sattention and take them on a shared

journey. They use their humor like theboy in E.T. used Reese’s Pieces to enticethe alien to follow him; they bring theaudience along line by line, laugh bylaugh. And the audience pays them todo it, without even being rewardedwith candy.

I think comedians have a lot to teachtechnical speakers. Being consistentlyfunny in front of audiences that ofteninclude people from many differentcountries, ethnicities, and religiousaffiliations is extremely difficult, and itcan be hazardous.

It takes exquisite sensibility to getpeople to laugh without going just alittle too far and making them angryor hurting their feelings—at whichpoint effective communication is justabout impossible. Genuinely funnytechnical speakers are rare, but they doexist—Nick Tredennick comes tomind. But you don’t have to be JayLeno to get your points across to atechnical audience.

There are so many books, Web sites,manuals, videos, trainers, and coursesproviding information on how to makeeffective presentations that it seems likeevery presenter on Earth could use sev-eral of them without overlapping withanyone else. I don’t know which arebest, but I did take Jerry Weissman’scourse, and I read his book (Presentingto Win, The Art of Telling Your Story,Prentice-Hall 2003), and I think it’s a great place to start.

THE BAR ISN’T ALL THAT HIGHThe first thing to realize when pre-

senting is that the audience isn’texpecting the presenter to have a JerrySeinfeld-like command of the situa-tion. They’ve learned better. Whilethey’re secretly hoping for a speakerwho will engage their intellect, stimu-late their thinking, and make them feelgood that they’re alive, they’re resignedto yet another formless boring datadump by an otherwise intelligent engi-neer or researcher who not only hasn’tfigured out how to connect with theaudience, he hasn’t even realized heneeds to.

PresentationLessons fromComediansBob Colwell

Presenting is askill, essential toengineering andto the final qualityof whatever wedesign.

September 2005 11

Audiences have learned from longexperience that most presenters simplylaunch into their own work as if

• the audience has read and thor-oughly assimilated all previouswork in their field;

• it can absorb, in real time, all ofthe material about to be verballyinflicted on them; and

• it can accurately extract the impor-tant conclusions from this workwith little help from the presenter.

In other words, the audience isn’texpecting much, so even modestimprovements in your ability to makea presentation can elicit gasps of appre-ciation from your audience. The barjust isn’t all that high.

Weissman says that the first thingprospective presenters need to do is tofigure out what they’re trying to say.He doesn’t mean that they shouldmake an extended list of all conceiv-able ideas they could possibly stuff intotheir talk if only they talk fast enoughand use a nanofont; he means theirpaper was selected because the confer-ence committee saw a contribution inthere somewhere. The presenter’s jobis to put a spotlight on that contribu-tion, give the context and history,explain what the contribution is andwhat it means, and spend a minute ortwo elaborating on the implications forthe future.

After identifying a logical flow ofideas to capture the sequence outlinedabove, the next task is to conjure up aset of visual aids that will help get themain points across (while simultane-ously providing cues to keep on trackand on time.) Yes, the presenter mustnow create a PowerPoint presentation.

A TUFTIAN DIGRESSIONYou don’t have to agree with every-

thing data presentation guru EdwardTufte says, but I think everyone wouldagree that Tufte has thought long andhard about what it means for humansto communicate. Tufte has publishedseveral classic books on illustrations,

graphs, and diagrams, and he doesn’tpull his punches: He names names,uses books and Web sites as examplesof what not to do (and why), andoffers real proposals for what mightwork better. Yes, he’s opinionated, buthis opinions aren’t arbitrary, andthey’re thought provoking regardlessof how well they resonate.

Which is why an article by Tuftetitled “PowerPoint Is Evil” (WiredMagazine, Sept. 2003) garners atten-tion. Tufte decries the tendency for

using “bullet-oriented” visual aids toestablish an almost military-like rela-tionship between presenter and audi-ence, along with its tendency tobulldoze subtlety and replace it withshort, ambiguous phrases. I agree withTufte on one point for sure: PowerPointlowers the audience’s IQ by 20 points.

It’s your job as presenter to realizethat and compensate for it. For exam-ple, you can temporarily lift the audi-ence out of its torpor by your bodylanguage, your cadence, and variousother surprises and tricks. Watch pro-fessional entertainers to see how theydo this. Tufte wouldn’t like this, how-ever—he’s concerned only with data,not with keeping the audience inter-ested.

When Tufte takes aim at Power-Point’s facilities for converting moder-ately promising data into completelyuseless but colorful charts, he can’t miss.He calls this “chartjunk” that “pokes afinger into the eye of thought.”

In his analysis of the presentationsassociated with the space shuttleColumbia disaster (The Cognitive Styleof PowerPoint, Graphics Press, 2003),Tufte states, “Designer formats willnot salvage weak content. PowerPointallows speakers to pretend that they

are giving a real talk, and audiences topretend that they are listening.” Assomeone who gives a lot of talks, all ofthem PowerPoint-based, all I can sayis, “Ouch, you’re messing with my illu-sions.”

But for all the criticisms Tufte levelsat PowerPoint, it’s not a given thatPowerPoint must be used in the wayshe denigrates. Tad Simons points out(www.presentations.com) that Tufteseems not to have ever actually usedPowerPoint, and he seems to think thatbecause certain of its features are com-monly misused, they can only be mis-used.

It is also by no means clear how apresenter would be expected to bemore effective without using any visualaids to accompany a presentation. I’vebeen at talks where the projector orlaptop malfunctioned and the speakerhad to deliver the talk using only thepower of his oratory. It is certainly pos-sible to do that—Winston Churchill,Martin Luther King Jr., and John F.Kennedy come to mind—but the ratioof great orators to boring pedantsseems vanishingly small to me. Mostof us need help.

WHAT’S YOUR POINT?That’s where Jerry Weissman comes

back in. His attitude is that if you getyour story right, the delivery will fol-low. How many people do you knowwho can tell a story well, in a way thatmakes people stop talking and payattention?

Weissman says that when the storyisn’t clear, the audience has to work toohard to make sense of it, and they willresist it, become irritated, and finallylose confidence in the presenter.Conversely, once the story is clear, theaudience will come along for the rideeven if the presenter has all the oratoryskills of the father clownfish in FindingNemo (the one who couldn’t tell thejoke that ended, “with fronds likethese, who needs anemones?”)

Weissman identifies five hazards(which he calls “cardinal sins”) toavoid in a presentation:

It takes exquisite sensibility to get peopleto laugh without going

too far.

12 Computer

A t R a n d o m

• no clear point, • no audience benefit, • no clear flow, • too detailed, and • too long.

When the talk is over, the audiencemembers should know why that talkwas worth delivering, and they shouldbe able to translate that point intosome kind of personal benefit.Weissman says that presenters mustexplicitly tell the audience what thebenefit to them is; he calls this WIIFY:What’s In It For You.

If the talk is a gale-force hurricaneof technical minutiae, few audiencemembers will get the real point. If thetalk skips and bounces around, mostaudience members will have fallen outof the presenter’s bus and be lying bythe side of the road when the bus getsto its destination.

If the presenter gets everything right,she can still ruin everything by simplytalking too long. Again, we should takeour cues from professional entertain-ers: Leave them wanting more, neverthe reverse. If you see a lot of yawnsand surreptitious glances at wrist-watches, consider that the audience’sway of telling you you’re living on bor-rowed time; wrap it up.

Weissman also makes a blindinglyobvious point, well worth making butstrange in that for every talk someonegives, he is an audience member for 10others and should therefore know bet-ter: Do not, under any circumstances,read the foils to the audience.

As Tufte says, respect your audience.Implying that they can’t read as well asyou can isn’t a path toward the desiredoutcome. It also conveys the impres-sion that the presenter has no addi-tional insights to contribute, and itmakes the audience wonder if she didn’t prepare these slides or maybeshe just doesn’t know what she’s doing.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EYE CONTACTIn his July 2004 The Profession col-

umn in Computer titled “In Defense ofPowerPoint,” my colleague Neville

Holmes took considerable exceptionto those who would say the worldwidepandemic of bad presentations can betraced to a PowerPoint disease germ.

Holmes and Weissman agree on theimportance of eye contact. In his train-ing, Weissman says “speak only toeyes,” never to generalized emptyspace over the heads of the audiencemembers.

If you’ve never tried this before, itcan feel a bit strange; but once you getused to it, it works extremely well. Itslows down your presentation (whichusually is the right direction), it rein-forces your subliminal contextualgrasp (you’re communicating withhumans, not Delivering a Mega-Talkto Your Peers Who Might Eat YouAlive Afterwards), and it gives youimmediate feedback on how you’recoming across (so you can adjust inreal time if necessary).

Again, watch entertainers: Whenspeaking on stage, they look directly atsomebody in the audience. Entertainersmove their gaze around, but there’s nodoubt about who they’re trying toreach at any given moment.

Incidentally, a slightly spooky aspectof Weissman’s training is that he role-models his ideas. This means that ifthere are four people in your trainingsession, 25 percent of the time he’slooking directly at you. Don’t let yourattention wander, don’t glance downat your watch, and think about thatwhat-I-had-for-dinner memory ques-tion some other time.

MAKING PRESENTATIONS MORE INTERESTING

Weissman has a great deal of advicefor how to make your PowerPoint pre-

The first thingprospective presentersneed to do is to figure

out what they are tryingto say.

sentation more interesting and effec-tive. Graphics are good and go on theleft side of the slide. Bullets are good,but no more than four, and no morethan four words per bullet. Builds—sequences of slides that are slight mod-ifications of their predecessors—aregreat.

It’s not enough to just make a fewsalient points per slide; if the talk hasbeen properly constructed, there’s aflow to it, and the presenter’s job is tokeep that flow moving. The relationshipof each slide to the previous ones mustbe clear, as well as the reason why eachslide has been included in the first place.

Background colors and font colorsmatter, for the same reason that yourshirt shouldn’t violently conflict withyour pants—don’t give the audienceyet more reasons to miss the pointsyou’re trying to make.

Weissman has one more piece ofadvice that musicians, comedians, andperformers of all stripes will instantlyrecognize: Practice! When he has a newpresentation to give, Weissman says hedoes trial deliveries of that talk con-stantly for a few days. He delivers thetalk while driving his car, while brush-ing his teeth, and in front of any prac-tice audience he can cajole into sittingstill for it.

Just as with a musical performance,the more you practice the performance,the smoother it becomes, and the bet-ter the audience will respond to it.

THE WORST TALKS I’VE EVER SEENThe worst presentation I’ve ever had

the misfortune to witness was in anundergraduate EE class in which theerstwhile professor had so little com-mand of the material that he literallyhad the class open the textbooks topage N, and proceeded to read thebook aloud to us for the entire classperiod. His appalled audience knewless about the subject when he was fin-ished reading than when he started,but they knew a lot more about himand his incompetence.

In a category of their own are thoseengineering meetings where somebody

September 2005 13

the audience knows that is what yourtalk is about so they will listen with theintent to contribute, and they won’t beannoyed by the lack of a punchline.

P resenting is a tricky business.We’re all expert audience mem-bers, having done it so many

times, but that doesn’t translate intoour being expert presenters, any morethan intensive listening to Yo-Yo Mawill make us expert cellists. Presentingis a skill, essential to engineering and tothe final quality of whatever we design.

has done an interesting experiment andcollected some data that looks usefulbut has no idea what to do with it.What a letdown to carefully follow theexperiment’s methodology, painstak-ingly work through the data, and thendiscover the presenter has no idea ofwhat it all means. He was not, in fact,leading you toward an interesting conclusion but was simply fumblingaround, hoping you could make some-thing out of it.

There’s a place for creative collabo-ration, even before you have a positionyou want to argue for, but make sure

Watch the comedy channel on TV,read Weissman’s book, and practice,practice, practice. If you do, you’ll stillbe a great presenter long after you can’tremember what it was you came totalk about. I think. �

Bob Colwell, the 2005 recipient of theIEEE Computer Society/ACM Eckert-Mauchly Award, was Intel’s chief IA32architect through the Pentium II, III,and 4 microprocessors. He is now anindependent consultant. Contact himat bob.colwell@comcast.net.

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