Comments on: How to Deliver a Killer Technical Presentation

By: Style and Comfort | SQLRockstar

Style and Comfort | SQLRockstar — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:59:34 +0000

[...] your own style. You can find lots of self-help references for delivering technical presentations (here is a good one) but in the end you want to make sure that it is your voice and style that is coming out and not [...]

By: Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:08:33 +0000

Thanks, man! I’m really glad I could help.

By: Raghuram (AJ)

Raghuram (AJ) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:27:48 +0000

I read this article several times while preparing for my presentation at Southern New England SQL Server Users Group (on Oct 14th). I performed with greater confidence & the presentation was very well received by the audience. I wanted to thank you for that. Excellent to-do and to-avoid guides that I will refer to before preparing for any presentation. Great job Brent!

By: Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:01:25 +0000

Thanks, sir, glad you liked it!

By: Pinal Dave

Pinal Dave — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:08:28 +0000

Lots of discussion is going on here.

I just wanted to add my bit that I enjoyed whole article as well comments here as well.

Overall great stuff.

Regards,
Pinal

By: Rick Kierner

Rick Kierner — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:07:57 +0000

Brent, I completely agree. I’ve attended a ton of community presentations over the past couple of years. The majority have appeared to have been thrown together in a couple of hours and have no continous thought pattern throughout the presentation. When confronted, most presenters say “It’s just a code camp presentation, what did you expect?” Well, I expect that people take pride in who they are and the work that they do. I expect that someone who is going to get in front of 30-100 people wants to be thought of as a professional that cares about the image they are portraying. I appreciate the quality of a presentation possibly more than the content of a presentation.

By: Recap of Cape Cod .NET User’s Group « Home of the Scary DBA

Recap of Cape Cod .NET User’s Group « Home of the Scary DBA — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:28:10 +0000

[...] and I went through my slides. As I did them, I kept thinking about some of the advice offered up by Brent Ozar yesterday. Suddenly my slides seemed so wordy. It started to throw me off, but I just ignored it [...]

By: David Stein

David Stein — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:05:38 +0000

To me the point comes down to your purpose. Are you teaching a class or doing a presentation?

Recently I watched Brian Knight give a presentation at our local SSUG on SQL Server Analysis Services and it was clearly a presentation. You were not expected to be able to create Data Warehouses at the end of an hour.

His style was more in tune with Brent, had many slides including some just for humor, and it was interesting to watch. Consequently it motivated me (even more than I was before seeing it) to learn SSAS.

If you are teaching a class (several hours to several days), then perhaps slides and note taking are appropriate. If you are giving a presentation, you are motivating people to do something, such as purchasing SSAS classes from Mr. Knight.

As usual, great article Brent.

By: Rob Paller

Rob Paller — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:36:19 +0000

Somewhere in the blogosphere, I read that instead of taking time at the end of your presentation for any “Thank you’s” or other acknowledgments to put them in a repeating slide show leading up to the start of your presentation. That way as people stroll into your session they can see this ahead of time and it doesn’t clutter or detract from your actual presentation. It might also be a good place to put information about where to find the presentation materials after the conference as well.

By: Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:05:09 +0000

Scott –

1. That’s very true. I like to think of my presentations as marketing ideas: it’s my goal to get you to DO something at the end of my presentation. I have to convince you why my technique is worth implementing.

2. Yep, and your slides are designed by a team of $100k SQL Server people – or at least, a team of one. By learning a little about graphics design, you can really take things a long way.

3. Exactamundo.

4. That’s the point. The slide deck isn’t for takeaway sentences. The slide deck drives people to your blog, where they get the actual content. That’s the first point I make in this blog entry – your blog is for complete sentences, and during presentations, the sentences should come out of your mouth, not on the slide deck. If you’re just going to put words on the wall, why would you even talk? Why not just put the words up there and you can advance slides until you get to the demos?