Speaker Guidelines
For everyone’s benefit, marketing or sales pitches will not be accepted within presentations. This factor has been proven to be the single biggest dissatisfier among conference delegates in the past. Our delegates look to you for objective professional assistance and guidance to stay current. Additionally, it is very important that your materials be reflective of today’s current business environment. If you have presented the same talk in a previous event, we ask that you take some time to review the material and update it as needed. Please keep your company branding to a minimum on your slides.
Our feedback shows that delivering a presentation in a conversational style works better than reading it from a script or from the slides. Bear in mind that many delegates do not have English as a first language. Ensure that the key messages of your presentation are clearly articulated in your slides and if possible, illustrate with examples.
Opening Slide
Please begin your presentation with the slide provided by Lesley Cook. This was provided in your speaker email.
Presentation Format:
For clarity and optimisation of lighting, conference speakers are encouraged to prepare their presentations accordingly. Keep in mind the generally accepted guidelines for effective presentation:
· Estimate between two and a half to four minutes per slide (not usually more than 16-25 slides per 45-minute session). If you do have more slides than this and a lot of them are for reference only can you please include these at the end of your slides and mark them up as such.
· Do not use too many lines on the page or too small a font (less than 16).
· Use graphics to support a teaching point but in moderation.
· Use a light background and dark text for good contrast with slides or computer projection.
· Use colours where possible but avoid red type especially with blue backgrounds.
· We will supply you with a conference slide to use at the beginning and end of your presentation. Use of company logos per slide should be kept to a minimum.
Advisory Panel
The volunteers who form the conference advisory panel are here to help. They will provide you with useful peer-to- peer feedback on your slides and will be very happy to discuss any uncertainties that you may have. The advisory panel’s main focus is on ensuring that the conference is as varied and valuable as possible, so please do take any feedback that is provided into account.
Presentation Guidelines:
Your presentation will be made available to all conference delegates online a few weeks prior to the event to allow them to indicate which sessions they would like to attend. This allows delegates to download presentations prior to their attendance. The presentations will also be available at the event via the conference platform. It may also be used for promotional purposes by IRM UK. It is important that we receive your materials by the deadline date for inclusion in the proceedings as they will made available just to registered delegates online before the event.
Final Proceedings Preparation:
Slides should be in a PDF format to share with delegates prior to the conference and a pptx version for back-up. Please produce two slides per page, and note that Company branding on each slide should be kept to a minimum.
Speaker Briefing Notes
There are some simple things you can do to vastly improve your presentation.
Develop the slide show carefully. So many conference presentations are criticised for slides that are unreadable or irrelevant. If you intend to use a slide to ‘show the gist’ of a point, then produce a customised overview slide rather than using a detailed diagram which will not be helpful for the audience. Also, take care with the number of slides developed. Too many will turn the session into a race through the slides with little opportunity for you to explain what you are representing and the audience to grasp the points being made. Try and cut down the number of words on each slide and remove as many bullet points as possible. A few words, or better still some images, which form the basis for a discussion, will be far more engaging.
Rehearse. Rehearse. Rehearse. Your audience will not appreciate it if you are hesitant or running well under or over time. Long before the conference, give your talk — the complete talk with slides and any other materials to an empty room or a friendly audience. Steve Jobs used to rehearse for weeks before he gave his Apple Keynote talks. While your audience is not expecting you to be Steve Jobs, you should know how long your talk will take, the points you are going to make, the anecdotes you will use, how you are going to say certain things, and what’s coming on the next slide. You are always going to deliver a better presentation if you have spent a few hours rehearsing.
Get to the point. There is no need – in fact it is undesirable – to give a long introduction to the background to the talk. And talking about your subject will help overcome any nervousness. You shouldn’t spend more than a minute introducing your company and what it does. Similarly, only provide a detailed explanation of the business situation that forms the background to your talk if this is important, new and relevant. If you do need to talk about the background, consider introducing specific points when they are needed. That way you don’t waste time describing a situation, or a business, which is probably either familiar, or of no interest, to your audience.
Interact with your audience if relevant to the topic. You can do this by talking to the audience, asking questions or requesting that they do things. In smaller sessions, drawing diagrams or models on a flipchart helps to engage with the audience and build rapport during an interactive session.
Don’t read your slides. The audience will be made up of people who can read so don’t read the slides to them. If there are lots of words on your slides then the audience will be reading ahead of you, which means that they are hearing one thing and reading something different. The slides should form the background for your talk; if you are just going to read them to the audience, then the session doesn’t add anything to their knowledge and understanding. Make your slides the background to the talk so the audience can concentrate on what you’re saying.
Be prepared on the day. Get to the room early and make sure that the projector, the microphone (if supplied), any props or other things you need, are ready to go. Have your presentation loaded, and wherever possible, play through it before anyone else is in the room. It is amazing how many presenters find part way through their presentation that some of the slides, or pictures on the slides, are missing. If you are using extra materials such as videos or demos of software, make sure they are queued up and ready before any of your audience arrive.
Each meeting room will have a data projector with a standard HDMI cable and Screen, the larger rooms will have a PA system and wireless lapel microphone for each speaker. We prefer speakers to use their own laptops, but we are happy to book out a conference laptop for you should you wish, just let us know in advance. Please bring your HDMI adaptor to connect to our data projector as the adaptors are unique to each model.
Good luck but if you do all of these things, you shouldn’t need it!
