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Mastering Professional Presentations: Tips for Engaging With a Technical Audience

Learn how to efficiently present a topic to a technical audience, focusing on professionalism, language clarity, slide content, and engaging delivery. Discover strategies to captivate and maintain contact with your audience, tailor messages, and strengthen credibility with quality visuals and electrical diagrams.

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Mastering Professional Presentations: Tips for Engaging With a Technical Audience

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  1. How to Efficiently Present a Topic when Facing (Scary) People? by Christophe Basso

  2. Agenda • What do You Present? • Do I Really Speak English? • Slides Content • Shapes and Electrical Diagrams • Making the Speech a Success – Key Points • Conclusion

  3. Agenda • What do You Present? • Do I Really Speak English? • Slides Content • Shapes and Electrical Diagrams • Making the Speech a Success – Key Points • Conclusion

  4. You are a professional engineer in your field, the documents you present must reflect this! What do You Present? • Communicate a message, show/comment data, an idea etc. • People should see your professionalism in what you show • Perception will depend on different factors: • ease of expression, message clarity, compactness… • tailor the message to the audience: engineers, finance etc. ? • mesmerize the audience and maintain contact with it • make each slide with care, nice drawings, well-commented curves…

  5. Agenda • What do You Present? • Do I Really Speak English? • Slides Content • Shapes and Electrical Diagrams • Making the Speech a Success – Key Points • Conclusion

  6. Do I Really Speak English? • You may have foreigners in your audience, "polish" your language! • A lot of people, including myself, learn British English at school • Most of us do not understand the meaning of sports expressions: • Full-court press (maintain pressure), home run (complete success), to be on par with (meet similar standard, results etc.), ballpark (base-ball field): don't use too many of them! • Slang is also a limiting factor when you speak. Avoid colloquial expressions. In other terms… • Chase and get rid of "euh, eem..." • insert a pause, a blank instead Keep It Simple Sweet heart!

  7. Agenda • What do You Present? • Do I Really Speak English? • Slides Content • Shapes and Electrical Diagrams • Making the Speech a Success – Key Points • Conclusion

  8. Good Too heavy! Slides Content • Write soberly, do not overload slides with long sentences • If you put a long text, you will end-up reading the content • NEVER read the slides: disastrous and soporific effect guaranteed!

  9. or Slides Content • When you present technical data, be rigorous in your style • Respect standards such as IEEE's: • Insert a space between the value and the unit: 3 µF not 3uF, 1 mA… • You write: dc-dc or ac-dc converters. Not DC/DC or AC/DC • Zener and Schottky are proper nouns, capitalize! • Keep lowercases for rms, k (kV or kHz), ac analysis • Insert an hyphen: a capacitor of 3 µF  a 3-µF capacitor, a 2-mA current • Avoid abbreviations : A or amperes not "amps", "scope", "puff" • Unit names are not to be capitalized: ampere, volt… • Use International System units: no ounces, inches or circular mills! • "I own the heaviest dog in the world: 10 stones" (63.5 kg)

  10. Agenda • What do You Present? • Do I Really Speak English? • Slides Content • Shapes and Electrical Diagrams • Making the Speech a Success – Key Points • Conclusion

  11. italic normal space Shapes and Electrical Diagrams • Do you include equations? Use the right tool: R1=-b+/-sqrt(b^2-4ac)/2a • In equations, respect standards : normal http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathtype/

  12. Vcb Ie Vbeon Shapes and Electrical Diagrams • Do you present electrical schematics: don't use PPT to draw! • There is a plethora of free schematic capture demos you can use • OrCAD (Cadence), SpiceNET (Intusoft), LTSpice (LTC) etc. A quality schematic strengthens your credibility

  13. Agenda • What do You Present? • Do I Really Speak English? • Slide Content • Shapes and Electrical Diagrams • Making Your Speech a Success – Key Points • Conclusion

  14. Don't turn your back! Making Your Speech a Success A few points to respect in order to succeed • Put an agenda in place and briefly explain what you will cover • Rehearse your presentation and respect your time slot • PPT illustrates your speech and not the opposite: do not read! • Work the transitions to make the presentation fluid • Draw transparencies soberly, do not overload them • Keep visual contact with the audience: • Identify "friendly" people in the room and look at them regularly. Move in the room while you speak. Keep people awake!

  15. Making Your Speech a Success • Personalize your presentation depending on the audience • Insert known people pictures, local references - Paul Hogan in Australia, Benny Hill UK, some funny guys in the US: ) • Breathe, force yourself to speak slowly, insist on key words • Engage with the audience, ask questions, make it a living presentation • During the presentation, no bubble-gum, hand(s) in the pocket… • Watch the laser pointer, do not play in another swashbuckler • Keep time for questions/answers, roughly 5-10 mn • Before answering a question, repeat it for the back of the room

  16. Conclusion • Always end the speech with a conclusion: • come back on key points • reinforce an idea or salient points of your speech • thank people for their presence • wave your hand to initiate the Q&A session and smile! Pardon my French!

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