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247arjun/Recipe-for-Remote-Presentations.md

Last active July 1, 2020 01:14
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Recipe for a good remote presentation
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Recipe-for-Remote-Presentations.md

Recipe for a good remote presentation

Key Ingredients

  1. An audience
  2. A topic that is of relevance to the audience (relevant from 2 points of view – they must WANT to learn the topic, they must be ABLE/ENABLED to learn the topic)
    • WANT = relevant (immediately or tangentially) to their learning objectives
    • ABLE/ENABLED = things like scoping the skill level (both ahead-of-time and real-time)
  3. A speaker who is excited (and experienced) about said topic
  4. A medium to share the speaker’s message

Pointers/takeaways from my experiences so far:

  1. I started off with a rough outline of what I wanted to share with the audience – made it a journey I wanted to take them on.

    • PowerPoint has an AMAZING “Outline” view functionality for this, which lets you put a skeleton together and automatically creates the slides for you.

  2. Once I had an outline, I moved to what I wanted the audience to see/experience

    • This is probably the biggest reason for my session’s success – the audience experienced the journey along with me.

  3. I storyboarded out the “acts” (think acts of a Shakespearean play) – pen on paper is sufficient, but it ends up creating a timeline of sorts that is very helpful.

    • For each act in my play, I approached what the narrative was.
    • This helped with what the demos contained, and how much pause I needed to give in the demo recording so I could explain something (v/s click-click-done)
    • I added these to the PowerPoint slide notes

  4. I then proceeded to record the demos.

    • This was a bit tricky because I had to record it on personal hardware because of the nature of the content
    • I used my MacBook and recorded the windows that were showing the demo content – macOS has a built-in screen capture/recording tool that I used. For Windows, you can use Game Bar (WinKey + G) or other third-party software like SnagIt
    • I ended up recording multiple short clips – 1 for each act

  5. To move video content between the personal laptop and a work laptop, I have both computers synced to my OneDrive, so I just dropped the video recordings there and let it sync

    • OneDrive is great for backing up content too – instead of shuffling between USB drives.

  6. Once I had the demo videos, I inserted them into the PowerPoint slides

    • PowerPoint will play the video content on a slide in a slideshow when you advance the slide
    • It will not AutoPlay when you load the slide. This is useful to setup the video for the audience before it starts playing.
      • You can then press the Right Arrow key to start playing the video
    • I cannot find an obvious way to pause the video once it starts playing, so you want to ensure the pauses are built into the recording

  7. Add in the text slides that frame the demo/video/graphic slides

    • People don’t necessarily remember the text on your slides, they remember what you said or what they experienced.
      • Keep text minimal
    • Personal preference: I don’t prefer slides with fancy themes/backgrounds as I feel they detract from the content

  8. Engaging the audience

    • Especially for video (remote) content, audience engagement is harder than in-person
    • A trick I was taught was to use a Post-It note on your computer near the camera, with a little arrow pointing to the camera, so you are reminded to make “eye contact” and know where to look

  9. Practice dry run

    • I had the benefit of doing a practice dry run in front of an audience that gave me feedback
    • My dry run was done in Teams, which gives you the option to record a video call/meeting

  10. Disaster planning before going live

    • Before you start your presentation/session, you want to make sure you have a backup PC to handle unforeseen interruptions during the session itself (aka the curse of the demo gods, aka Murphy’s Law)
    • This will mean having a second computer with the PowerPoint slides downloaded and opened, and 1 click away from needing to dial into the video if needed

  11. Go big

    • At this point, you’ve fully embraced the content of the session and you should feel comfortable about going for it
    • You will end up deviating from your script, just go with it

  12. Recording/Moderation

    • Have someone else on the call/video handle the recording and other logistics – as the speaker, it helps to not be distracted from your flow

  13. Editing

    • You will have 2 recordings at this point – the dry run and the final “real” run. Some things may have worked better in 1 than the other.
    • You may have to edit some portions of the video for time

  14. Publishing

    • We used an internal video portal to host video content
    • Microsoft Stream is a good place to host video content if you have an Office 365 account.

  15. Post-publishing outreach

    • Your session’s success is determined not just by attendance to the live version
    • You should reach out, back to the original audience, once the recording is available to let them know
      • They may end up recommending the content to a larger (initially out-of-reach) audience
    • Also include some new content in this outreach material versus “hey everyone, here’s the video”
      • This will also refresh the memory of people who have previously viewed the content
      • It will also continue audience engagement after the session
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