Zac Erickson

Last week, I gave three presentations in three days. Two of them were an hour long as part of Brain Awareness Week, and one was 15 minutes at the University of Lethbridge Graduate Student Meeting of the Minds. I won second place out of over 40 presenters at the latter. In fact, just about any time I give a presentation I have people come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed my presentation.

I’m not writing about this because I want everybody to know how awesome I am. In fact, I really don’t think I’m all that good. There are several things that I could absolutely do better, and I suck at them right now. For example, I pace back and forth all the time (unsurprising for someone with ADHD), and after watching a recent presentation of mine on video, its something I’m going to work on. However, there are a few things that a lot of people don’t think about when giving a presentation, lecture, or talk. This is by no means intended to be a perfect list, so if you have additional comments let me know in the comments!

1. Speak in Everyday English (No Jargon!)

This week, I taught a group of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities about the brain. The very next day, I did the same thing to a room full of graduate students. One of the most important things you can do to improve your presentation style is to get rid of jargon and talk like a real person. The number of times you will ever speak to a group of people who have the same level of knowledge as you on a given subject is next to none. Every discipline has jargon, but you don’t need to sound like a text book while explaining concepts either. If a specific word is going to be important for the duration of your presentation, the very first time it arises in your presentation you must define it in plain English immediately. If you’re having a hard time doing that, find the nearest little kid and explain what the word means to a child. If you can’t do that, you need to either remove that concept for your outline, or find another way of expressing that idea.

All too often, experts in a certain area speak like they’re reading an article from scientific journal. The Plenary address speaker at the conference I went to last weekend spoke about the “anthropocene” for 20 minutes before bothering to tell us what the word meant. Within two minutes, I had shut her out and was looking the word up on Wikipedia. I couldn’t understand a word she said until I did that. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to have a slide that said “Anthropocene: a term to express that we are in a new age where humans are a driving geological force.” Boom. Done. Don’t assume people know what you’re talking about. You don’t have to dumb concepts down, you just have to speak to them like a human being.

2. Simplify Your Slides

This is huge, and it is one of the most common mistakes around. If I wanted to read pages of text, I would have stayed home and read a book. So many presenters make terrible slides. Seriously, they suck. Some of the most brilliant professors I have ever spoken to have had the worse slides known to man.

The number one crime that most people commit is making their slide too crowded. My rule is 30 or fewer words per slide, and only one picture. If you need more than that, use more than one slide. Every-so-often you need to include more than one picture, but make sure that it is essential that you need to have both visible (eg. before and after pictures). Also, if you’re using more than a few words, use bullets to separate ideas. If you insist of having a ton of text on your slide, for goodness sakes, use the animations to hide text until you want to talk about it. If you put an entire slide full of text up, your audience is going to be reading your slide instead of listening to you.

3. Practice Using a Conversational Tone

In my mind, nothing takes me out of a talk more than someone who is clearly reading or reciting from a script. If I catch a podcaster doing it for the majority of their content, I usually am so turned off by it that I unsubscribe. In contrast, your audience will have a stronger connection with you while you’re speaking in a natural, conversational tone. By the time you get up to give a presentation, you should have a pretty good idea of what you want to say, so just make yourself a list of bullet points to cover and have a conversation with your audience. There have been countless times that I have spoken in public where a small example or annecdote has come into my hea on the spot that has enriched the topic.

In cases where you really need to give a scripted talk, work your hardest to use a conversational tone. You know the tone I’m talking about. Go and watch an Steve Jobs Keynote. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect some form of a script was made before Steve used to head on stage, but he always felt like he was up on stage just shooting the breeze with the audience. He got excited. He got mad. He was a little off-the-cuff. Those were the kinds of things that made Steve a great showman. If you can get excited about your topic, the audience will become excited and be pulled in.

QUESTION: What do you think makes a great presentation and a great presenter? Did I miss anything? Do you disagree with things I’ve said?

The big difference between amateur and professional bloggers seems to be pretty clear: amateurs fade out and are not consistent. Professional bloggers consistently put out great content for people to enjoy. Professional bloggers have a following and they are authorities in their field. Amateurs write for themselves, while the pros seem to write for the benefit of others. Most importantly, I think the word professional indicates that you are making money off of your blog too, right?

So, let’s get down to business then. Why am I writing a blog? I’m really here to establish my own personal brand. I want to have a place online where I can just talk about stuff that is exciting and interesting to me. I want this blog to be a place where people can engage in interesting conversations. The question is: what contributes to a flourishing online platform?

I’ve been listening a lot to the podcast This is Your Life by Michael Hyatt, and he talks a lot about being intentional in your business. I’ve started to think about my blog and my personal identity as a business that needs to be properly represented, and I’m realizing that I really need to be intentional. What I mean by intentional is that I need to have a specific goal in mind, plan specific things to reach those goals, and then CRUSH IT! Its all about having a plan though, it seems. Flying by the seat of you pants can only get you so far.

Another thing I’ve been thinking a lot about is how building your online platform isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. You’ve got to work on it consistently and not give up. You can’t expect to be at the finish line of a marathon after only a few steps. Similarly, you can’t post a few things on your blog and expect to be the next Joe Q Blogenstein. I’m going to set a schedule for myself in the very near future and stick to it on a consistent basis.

So here’s today’s question: What do you think makes a good online platform for you personal brand? Let me know in the comments, and let’s get some discussion going!

Welcome to the new and soon-to-be-improved ZacErickson.com! Don’t mind the dust, it will be up and running in all it’s glory very soon. I found out a few days ago that the current platform that I’m running my blog on is closing shop on April 30 of this year. Instead of stomping my feet or lazily transferring my posts to a different service, I am taking the opportunity to start fresh. If you really want to see what my old blog was like, head over to ZacErickson.posterous.com, but it will be gone as of April 30. In the mean time, I am going to be working on making this blog be more professional and aesthetically appealing, but that’s going to take a little time.

So who am I? I…

• …am Zac Erickson (duh).
• …am a graduate student studying at the Canadian Center for Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge.
• …received my Bachelor of Science in April 2012 studying Psychology
• …have Adult Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and am passionate about breaking down walls and helping people understand the disorder in its many forms.
• …love geek culture, video games, movies, comics, podcasting, memes, and the like.
• …am a father of the two cutest kids in the world, and a husband to the best wife in the world (there is no room for debate, it’s fact).

Wondering what I will be blogging about? Here’s a few areas that I hope to cover:

• University-level education (both at the undergraduate and graduate level), based on personal experience
• Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (I have that!), including strategies and personal experiences
• Various other psychology and neuroscience topics that I think may interest you
• Personal productivity and self-improvement
• Geek culture and its place in a productive & professional life
• Podcasting!!! I love sitting behind the mic and talking about my passion. It’s time to dust that thing off and get started again.

I will be posting at least once a week, so do me a huge favor and subscribe to the blog. Also, if you’re on Twitter you can find me under @ZacErickson. I also want to leave every post with a question for the comments, so here we go.

QUESTION: What is one topic you would like to see me cover on my blog?