Improving INMM Technical Presentations

For the past three years, the Technical Program Committee of the INMM has asked Paul Ebel, of BE Inc., Hilton Head, SC, to conduct a 10-minute tutorial at the Speakers’ Breakfast on some aspect of improving technical presentations. The quality of our presentations has improved as a result of this quick tutorial at these breakfasts, and so again in 2006 he was asked to give yet another tutorial.

The subjects for the past three years have been, “Be excited about your subject,” “Design your slides with a maximum of 12 lines and effective use of a pointer,” and “Eliciting questions from the audience.” His subject this year was “Ask someone to critique your presentation.”

Ebel lamented the fact that Timothy J. Koegel beat him to writing a book, The Exceptional Presenter, published by The Kogel Group, Washington DC, (www.theexceptionalpresenter.com). In that book Koegel developed the acronym for exceptional presentations of “OPEN UP.”

O = Organized (be poised, polished, prepared and make the audience feel you are not wasting their time)

P = Passionate (be enthusiastic and convicted of the value of your subject)

E = Engaging (build rapport with your audience, make eye contact)

N = Natural (use a conversation style that is confident and easy)

U = Understand your audience (research your audience in advance and make sure the presentation is appropriate)

P = Practice (no one is born an exceptional presenter and we have to practice to keep getting better all the time.)

Ebel emphasized the last tip during his presentation this year by quoting Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do.” That means being an exceptional presenter will eventually become a habit as we practice it and repeatedly give exceptional presentations. However, since no one is born an exceptional presenter, we need to continually work on improving ourselves. At every presentation we need someone in the audience to honestly critique us.

If someone greets you at the conclusion of a presentation and gives you feedback like “That was a good presentation!” your response to them could be “Thank you, that is helpful!!! NOT” Someone in the audience should evaluate you according to OPEN UP and tell you exactly what they observed. Only by knowing how to improve, can you improve. If you are told “That was a good presentation” you will probably give the next one in exactly the same way without improving.

So, Ebel challenged each of the speakers at the 47th INMM Annual Meeting to give permission to someone in the audience to critically listen to their presentation and then give an honest evaluation with the intent of continually improving. Only through that mechanism can you to reach your goal of habitually being an “Exceptional Presenter.”