A Gamechanging Approach to Presentations

Sharing is good


Everyone always does that thing that is most important to them at that exact moment. Stop doing that other thing and think about it for a minute. When you’re in a meeting and someone’s on their laptop while you’re talking and then asks a question that you already answered, what happened? At that moment that person placed a higher value on what was on their laptop than what you were saying. <sigh> Here’s how I changed that game —

I recently conducted a workshop on backlog prioritization techniques. My process started the same as we all do – I created a PowerPoint deck and started practicing. It was boring. So I gave myself my talk using my boring PowerPoint then deleted the deck. Onward! I sketchnoted my talk and printed out copies for participants.

Using an app called Tawe I imported my sketchnote and used the app to navigate around the page from idea to idea. The result was a personal creation that was warm, creative, and engaging. I presented by projecting my iPad on the big screen and talked to my sketchnote.

Benefits:

  • There was not a laptop open during my presentation; the engaging format made my presentation the most important thing for the audience at that time
  • People used my printed sketchnote to take notes. Giving them the visual framework made it fast and easy for them to only write down points that I had not sketched
  • Since creating a sketchnote creates a visual map of the content that greatly improves recall, my depth of knowledge and understanding of the topic improved to the point where my sketchnote was my facilitation guide
  • I had as many people come up to me after the workshop to ask about sketchnoting techniques as came to discuss prioritization
  • I killed a PowerPoint deck!

Later, I went back and added a voiceover of my talk and saved the final version.