Before going on stage, you must review the three main aspects of the presentation: core point of view, logical context and differentiation.
[This article](https://medium.com/@chuckchiang/%E6%83%B3%E5%8F%83%E5%8A%A0%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%B8%E7%B0%A1%E5%A0%B1%E6%AF%94%E8%B3%B D%E5%97%8E-%E9%97%9C%E6%96%BC-%E5%85%A7%E5%AE%B9-%E6%9C%89%E4%B8%89%E5%A4%A7%E5%95%8F%E9%A1%8C-%E6%AF%8D%E6%B9%AF%E5% 96%94-af960222956) Author Jiang Qiao, and [Taiwan PHOTOSHOP Practice Group](https://www.facebook.com/taiwanphotos hop), [Presentation Practice Group] (https://www.facebook.com/pptpresentation) and [Unlimited] (https://www.facebook.com/photoinfinity) three Facebook fan page administrators. Thank you for authorizing the “Content Hacker” website to reprint it. Thank you hereby.
[Why we reprint this article] In order to help students learn communication skills as early as possible, universities often hold presentation competitions as an important training level before going out into society. But in the same briefing, why do some people speak vividly while others speak lifelessly? Based on his experience as a briefing reviewer for many times, Jiang Qiao compiled three important briefing guidelines for everyone, and provided them as a reference for all friends who are preparing to participate in briefing competitions or give presentations in the company as a reference for prior preparation.
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In the past two years, I have been honored to have the opportunity to serve as a judge for the Presentation competition in some universities. In the process of serving as a reviewer, you must watch a large number of student presentations and presentations in a short period of time and give scores.
Generally speaking, the scoring is usually divided into several scoring columns, such as content structure, presentation design and on-site typhoon slogans, etc. There will be some slight adjustments for different competitions and units, but they generally remain within these categories.
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Among these rating columns, it is usually the most fundamental and the most important, usually the “Content” section. So I’d like to share my observations on three of the most common questions about content in briefing competitions.
Three major inspection aspects of presentation content
- Are the core ideas and purposes clear enough?
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During the selection process, at the end of the briefings of certain groups, the judges in the audience will often show a classic expression like a black question mark, paired with these unspeakable O.S.:
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“Is the briefing over?”
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“What’s the point?”
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“So What?”
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“Then what?”
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“So?”
This is especially the case during the primary stage of the briefing competition.
This situation occurs because when students first construct the content of the presentation, they often only stay at the “data compilation” level. If you simply arrange the collected Internet information without extracting a core point and purpose that runs through the entire briefing, it will only give people the bad impression that it is like dipping in soy sauce, talking about a little bit here and there, but in the end you still don’t know what the topic the speaker wants to talk about.
A good briefing often begins with a main argument, extends the main story axis, is supplemented by supporting evidence, and ends with a last hook that induces a lingering aftertaste. The core purpose of a briefing is nothing more than:
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“Change audience perception”
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“Trigger audience action”
The explanation in vernacular is: The [value] of a briefing (https://www.contenthacker.today/2018/02/value-proposition-design.html) is based on the fact that the briefing producer can make people aware of some issues that are closely related to the audience but have not been paid attention to. Or maybe the briefing producer wants to inform the audience of some information that is important to the audience but they don’t currently know; flipping the current established ideas, triggering actions to solve the problem, and bring about better results. This is the core value of the brief.
Actions triggered by a brief must generally echo the brief’s original main argument. Regardless of the length of your presentation, always remember to remind your audience that they spent valuable time listening to your presentation—and what happens after they finish listening? What’s the next step with them? What can they do to make the situation better?
Perhaps the presentation creator collected a large amount of information on a particular presentation topic in the process of preparing for a presentation competition. In fact, the focus is often not on how much information the author has collected. In the era of information explosion, information is abundant and worthless. What is important is whether the author can discern and refine an argument and purpose that can run through the entire brief from behind these surface materials.
Concentrate your strength and attack a little, and you will be able to make a hole.
Hold the strength of the point and focus on it, and the point of the point must be used.
──Kihachiro Onitsuka
Time for briefing competitions is often extremely limited. In just a few minutes of briefing time, the author must develop all the slide content closely related to the main argument and purpose. Remember not to be greedy for too much to avoid side effects.
The usual time limit for briefing competitions is around 5 minutes. If the time is short, the speaker only needs to talk about a single specific point or purpose. It is taboo to mention only a little bit about any topic. The arguments should be concise and not loose. Please delete information that is irrelevant to the main argument or content that is not highly linked. Perhaps these contents make the author feel important and precious, but in a time-limited briefing competition, in order to more clearly highlight the core argument of the briefing, how to delete information is often what we need to learn more.
☆Aqiao’s extended book recommendation: [McKinsey consultant’s sequential thinking method of repeated self-practice: the boss asks a question, and you find the answer in one minute] (https://www.books.com.tw/exep/assp.php/chuck30804/produ cts/0010715088?utm_source=chuck30804&utm_medium=ap-books&utm_content=recommend&utm_campaign=ap-201806)!
- Is the logical flow between the slides smooth? [ ](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk-e_5YfBHLujRvwqSHqxP0FvE9JGVuCZ4EAasRdMlBP8A7 zGFCP4ZDERePHcjx7X5W7xvs4av5qOKK9bSRaHoWpAgc5FAYW1B6SJOvsXuswv-Lv5ilzYk51UWqupXcF_g7J4Dw-Y1m-yc/s1600/3.jpeg)
In the process of selecting presentations, sometimes the presenter does not connect the slides well when switching between slides, making it impossible for the judges and viewers to understand how the presenter leads from the previous presentation to the next, which means that the “flow” of viewing is interrupted. The reason may be that the causal relationship is too far-fetched, or that the previous and following pages are “correlation” but not necessarily “causal”, or the logic is too jumpy, etc. All of the above may lead to insufficient fluency of the presentation.
In addition to the content of each slide, how should the gaps between slides be connected? Fluency is also an important key to achieving a good presentation. A good briefing is like watching a great movie or traveling with a great tour guide. The transitions between storyboards, plots and scenes will make the audience feel smooth and unobtrusive when watching. The audience can completely follow the logical context of the presenter, and can even resonate with the speaker emotionally. At this time, it is difficult for the briefing producer to get a low score.
But for those who are just starting to get involved with presentations, I believe they don’t have much idea of how to structure and connect so many slides in a presentation. It is recommended that you first imitate some classic presentation structures from the past to learn how to lay out and discuss them. This would be a good start, for example:
1. Golden Circle Structure (Video):
It was proposed by Simon Sinek at TED and has been [viewed] by more than 10 million people on the Internet(https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?referrer=playlist-how_to_make_a_great_presentation&utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare). The structural sequence of the presentation content is linked from the inside out - from “Why?”, “How to do it?” to “What to do?”, so that the message delivered can resonate more with the recipients of the message.
2. SCQA demonstration method (Reference link):
- Situation
*Complication
*Question
*Answer
SCQA architecture is a structured expression tool proposed by Barbara Minto in the book “Pyramid Principle”. Using the SCQA architecture, a variety of architectural patterns can be deformed and combined, which can help us express our views more clearly.
3. ANSBA architecture (Reference link)
Proposed by Purdue University Communication Professor Alan Monroe. In the 1930s, he proposed a set of “Inciting Speech” structural sequence, believing that a good speech design process should be:
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A: Start by attracting the audience’s attention (Attention)
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N: Then point out the needs or troubles of the audience (Need)
*S: Click on the problem and draw the solution (Satisfaction/Solution)
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B: Let the audience “preview” the effectiveness of the solution (Benefit/Visualization)
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A: At the end of your speech, don’t forget to invite and call on the audience to take action.
As long as a suitable architectural reference is found, the author can find a way to connect and structure the slides in a shorter time. Overall, it can also help the presentation to be more systematic and organized. The audience at the scene will not feel confused during the briefing, and at the same time they will think that the speaker on the stage is well prepared.
I must remind everyone that this structure does not absolutely need to be followed. It is for your reference only, and it may not be fully applicable to the content of the presentation maker. If producers want to learn from and utilize this structure, and make changes and adjustments, they need to continue to learn and improve.
☆ Aqiao’s extended book recommendation: Show and Tell: Storytelling Show Pictures, Easily Convince the World
- What is the difference between yourself and others, and what are the highlights of the presentation?
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Many campus presentation competitions often set two or three relatively large theme directions as the basis for the presentation theme. However, in the preliminary round of the presentation competition, the number of registered groups may be more than forty or fifty, so some groups will select similar topics for presentations.
On the day of briefing selection, it is often found that the contents of reports on a certain topic from different groups are similar. But the most frightening thing is that as a reviewer, you may hear a dozen groups of briefings with very similar content. After listening to them, you will start to feel paralyzed, confused, and sleepy. You may even not remember whether a certain group reported on stage.
Therefore, shaping the differentiation and highlights of the briefing content has become an important key to whether the briefing producers can stand out. I think that in order to create differentiation and memory points in the briefing content, the following two methods can be adopted:
1. “Transposition” and “Reverse” thinking
Regarding the same topic, whether the briefing producer can use more different angles to discuss the discussion is the key to differentiation from other groups. And “Perspective Taking” and “[Reverse Thinking](https://www.contentha cker.today/2018/04/traditional-media-new-way.html)” can help everyone think more comprehensively about the same thing from different perspectives through different roles, different time points, and reverse thinking, rather than a single black-and-white view.
For example, the well-known Internet celebrity papijiang from the other side of the Taiwan Strait once discussed the popular New Year topic “New Year greetings to elders”. The video released during the Chinese New Year in 2017 pokes fun at “annoying elders” from the perspective of “young people” (Video); wait until During the Chinese New Year in 2018, I changed my perspective to launch a new story and talked about New Year greetings from the perspective of “elders” (Video). This is a good example of transposing and reverse thinking on the same topic.
I have seen [an article] from the other side (https://www.digitaling.com/articles/43282.html) before, explaining how the well-known writer Mi Meng wrote online articles that went viral. They shared the starting point of how they conceived the article. The article mentioned that Mi Meng and his team had to come up with 50 topics from popular Internet hot topics in a short period of time. In fact, finding new ideas is not that magical. The process of discovering new ideas is just a process of abandoning old ideas one by one. It is worth noting that the views that the creator thinks of at the first time and with the first intuition must not be written - because everyone else can also think of it. (For the full text, please refer to Link)
All in all, if the content of the briefing producer is similar to that of other groups, it means that no audience will have any memory or impression of the briefing. When there are no points of difference, highlights or memories in the briefing, it will only make the audience sleepy. Only when the briefing producer begins to consciously think in reverse and find different entry points for a certain topic, is the best start to create “difference” and “memory points”. “Unexpected and reasonable” is a constant principle needed to create differentiation and memorable points in the presentation.
2. Add the content of “first-hand information” Similar topics will cause each group of presentations to be similar. One of the important factors is that everyone’s information is the result found using similar “keywords” on the Google search engine. If you can find this information, other groups can also find this information, so it is not surprising that the information compiled for the briefing is similar. What’s even worse is that the information you find may be old articles that the reviewers have already read.
Using information that cannot be found on Google is the most valuable part of the briefing and is also an important key to differentiation. The so-called “first-hand information” refers to such information.
To generate first-hand information, students must design questions for a certain briefing topic, send out questionnaires at school, and obtain first-hand quantitative data. In addition to surveys, you can also conduct exclusive interviews with important relevant people on the topic to obtain exclusive qualitative interview information. Another approach is to get hands-on experience with the subject matter to gain first-hand experience of the complete implementation process.
This information is specially researched by students on the topic, and it is information that cannot be found using search engines. Many times, this kind of content is the soul and value of the briefing, and it is no longer just a copy and paste of data collected and copied from the Internet.
☆Aqiao’s extended book recommendation: Creative People - Self-training in Creative Thinking
Postscript
Before I knew it, I had written thousands of words about my experience in judging the briefing competition. Although the previous narration seems to be picking on the briefing contestants, I actually admire these briefing contestants and are willing to accept such a challenge. Looking back on the past when I was in college, I was far from being able to give presentations to the contestants now, and I didn’t even have the courage to stand on the stage and face everyone. So I sincerely admire all contestants who are willing to accept the challenge, no matter what the final result is.
Therefore, for such contestants, I will no longer just make demands based on the standards of ordinary college students, but hope to motivate the contestants to move forward with higher standards. Many of the viewpoints and content mentioned are also the goals and directions I strive to pursue. I hope the above thoughts and feelings can be helpful to everyone.
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☕️ Invite Vista to have a cup of coffee
