Presentation Management 20: Sharing and Presenting

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Original content by AlexAnndra Ontra and James Ontra
Enhanced by Geetesh Bajaj

In the last part of this Presentation Management series of posts, we looked at the distribution of presentation content. In this part, we look at two more aspects of a presentation’s life cycle: sharing and presenting.

Sharing

Sharing refers to how you share or send files to your clients and other third parties outside of your organization. This is especially important for sales, marketing, and investor relations. Those presentations directly affect the company’s image and bottom line.

This may appear like a seemingly mundane task, but it has huge implications for productivity. Files with images and videos tend to get too large and will be stripped from most corporate email systems. The file-size limit is different for every organization, so you don’t really know if your file will get through or not. Sharing gives media ad sales reps an easy way to send large video files to advertisers. Travel clients have high-resolution pictures and videos in their presentations, too. Anyone in any industry can have big files. The process of sharing these presentations is simple:

1. Choose one or more files. They could be large PDFs, PowerPoints, images, or videos, it doesn’t matter, as long as they tell the right story.
2. Click on Share, input your customer’s email address and within seconds your customer can view the files. Like YouTube. It’s instantaneous.

Then, you can track the consumption of the files. Did my client open it, download it, read it, ignore it–or maybe she just never received it? It’s productive to know how engaged your client is with the information you share because that will tell you how interested they are, and then help guide your next steps.

Similar to the permissions we just discussed, the shared files have permissions as well: permission to download, to edit, to view only, and whether that would be for a limited time frame or in perpetuity. Users not only track how their recipients are consuming the files they send, but they can also control their usage.

Share usage is a component in reporting. One user can track his shares for his own purposes, and the team leaders, which might be the presentation director and the VP of sales, can analyze share data for all users across the enterprise. Managers can see patterns and trends in content sharing, and make content adjustments accordingly.

Presenting

It wouldn’t be presentation management without the presenting. With today’s technology, there are many options for how you present your content.

Human contact is how relationships are solidified. Look people in the eyes, read their body language, watch them react to what you are saying. That is how strong relationships are built. Presentation management fosters better business relationships through higher-quality meetings. Let’s look at how in some different presentation settings.

1. One-to-one:

One-to-one meetings are less formal and more intimate. The presenter can give the presentation directly from her laptop, iPad, or even her phone. One-to-one presentations allow for more feedback and discussion. It’s also an easier format to switch to interactive mode, where the presenter selects content based on the other person’s feedback.

The presentation can follow the conversation. The presenter can learn more and therefore propose a better solution tailored to that person. These are very productive meetings.

2. One-to-several:

This is typically a conference room setting where one presenter is addressing a group of up to 20 people. A monitor or screen is needed. Though it’s more formal in nature, there is still the opportunity to go interactive as audience members raise issues and ask questions.

The FDA Advisory Committee presentations are one to several, with an emphasis on interactivity to conduct a detailed question and answer.

3. One-to-many:

This is an auditorium setting, which is more formal. Presentation management allows the presenter to give a pre-rehearsed presentation while fielding and answering questions from audience members. The ability to answer tough questions on the fly, supported by visuals, adds to the speaker’s credibility.

4. Conference:

Slide libraries are an integral tool for conference managers who need to collect and manage presentations for any number of speakers. In this scenario, your presentation management solution will manage the collection, organization, approvals, and presentations on the day of the event. It reduces the administration burden on the event managers.

Speakers send a presentation directly to the slide library, where it is automatically tagged based on pre-configured speaker credentials. Workflow settings can be applied so the presentation gets routed to the appropriate editors and/or approvers in preparation for the conference. And finally, on conference day, the presentations are already tagged and sorted so they can be assigned to the appropriate speaker, breakout room, and time.

The presentation is right there, ready to go on the podium. The speaker can even present directly from the library if your library has broadcast capability.

Linear versus interactive presentations:

A linear presentation, like your typical PowerPoint, is a pre-ordered set of slides–slide one, slide two, slide three, slide four, and on and on… It’s organized, predictable, and easy for the speaker to control. Interactive presentations are more like browsing a website:

• You click on one thing, which leads you to another.
• Then, someone asks a question, so you spontaneously pull up another slide, video, or image that addresses that question.

It’s free-form and it follows the conversation. Linear presentations force the conversation. Interactive presentations follow the conversation.

Interactive presentations foster productive conversations where both sides learn more about the other. In more than 20 years of presentation consulting, we’ve noticed that the more senior the executive, the more likely they are to present in interactive mode. They don’t need the security of a linear list. Though the nice thing about today’s interactive presentation tools is that they can accommodate both scenarios:

• They can let you go off-topic and spontaneously present content, and
• Then, click a back button to get back to the main storyline.

It’s the best of both worlds: control and spontaneity.

In the next post of this series, we will look at other aspects of a presentation’s life cycle.

Quiz

First, try and answer these questions. Feel free to read the post again if needed. Then, scroll down to below the author profiles to find the answers.

Q1: Can you implement permissions in the files you share within a presentation management solution such as Shufflrr?

Q2: Slide libraries are an integral tool for conference managers who need to collect and manage presentations for any number of speakers. Is this true or false?

 AlexAnndra Ontra, co-founder of Shufflrr, is a leading advocate for presentation management. She has been providing presentation technology and consulting services to global enterprises for over 15 years.

At Shufflrr, Alex advises Shufflrr clients through the process: from trial to content architecture, through the launch, training, and then on-going software upgrades. She’s hands-on. She is a leading expert in presentation management strategy, implementation, and adaptation.

 James Ontra is co-founder and CEO of Shufflrr.  His 30-year career has focused on the highest profile presentations for world class companies.  His clients have included:  American Express, Bloomberg, Epcot Center, Mercedes Benz, NBC Olympics, Warner Bros. and many more.

His vision and strategy have been driving Presentation Management to become a recognized communication discipline. James combined this passion with technical development to build Shufflrr. Presentation Management is smart communication strategy.

 Geetesh Bajaj is an awarded Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional), and has been designing and training with PowerPoint for more than two decades. He heads Indezine, a presentation design studio and content development organization based out of Hyderabad, India.

Geetesh believes that any PowerPoint presentation is a sum of its elements–these elements include abstract elements like story, consistency, and interactivity — and also slide elements like shapes, graphics, charts, text, sound, video, and animation. He explains how these elements work together in his training sessions. He has also authored six books on PowerPoint and Microsoft Office.

Quiz Answers

A1: Shared files from Shufflrr have permission attributes. You can set permissions to download, to edit, to view only, and whether that would be for a limited time frame or in perpetuity. Users not only track how their recipients are consuming the files they send, but they can also control their usage.

A2: This is true. Through slide libraries, your presentation management solution will manage the collection, organization, approvals, and presentations on the day of the event. It reduces the administration burden on the event managers.