How do you speak the data? at the Data Science Speakers

I presented How do you speak the data? at the Data Science Speakers club in December 2017:

In this presentation I covered three recommendations on how to present more engaging data related presentations:

• Show your passion
• Tell stories
• Be memorable

Below you can find the slides and the transcript for the presentation

 

Slide 1

How do you speak the data?

Slide 2

I think all of you have been in a similar situation, “Death by Powerpoint”, That presentation at the office meeting that the presenter used hundreds of PowerPoint slides full of text with small fonts and all delivered with a monotonous voice.

Today I will present three recommendations that you can use in your next presentation  to prevent a Powerpoint murder scene

Slide 3

For this three recommendations I will use as an example one of the best data presentations I have ever seen. It is a Ted talk from Hans Rosling. This Ted talk has been seen more than 12 million times, more than the population of Belgium. Hans talked about many misconceptions that people have of living standards around the world.

Slide 4

The first recommendation is show your passion. To make a really interesting presentation, you should be first interested in what you are saying. Your audience will immediately see that you are excited about what you are sharing them. In your presentations find ways to show this passion about the work that you do, assuming that you love the work that you do! Hans Rosling devoted all his life in topics of public health and you can see immediately that he is passionate about it

Slide 5

The second recommendation is to tell stories. Don’t throw the numbers without any context, tell first a simple story related to the data you are presenting. It could be something personal or something that happened to someone else. This will help to give a context of why the data is important, and remember to use a good sense of humour to ease your audience. In Hans presentation, he showed misconceptions of public health telling a story of a test to students, chimpanzees and Swedish professors!

Slide 6

The third recommendation is to be memorable. Find ways that your audience feel your presentation. You can use audio, pictures, video, objects or anything that can trigger a multisensory experience to your audience. They will remember more your presentation if not just hear what you say but if they also see it or feel it. Hans Rosling showed plenty of animated charts combined with striking facts of poverty, life expectancy and child mortality for the audience can remember how the world is changing

Slide 7

For your next time that you will speak the data, show your passion, tell stories to connect with people and find ways to make your content memorable

For this presentation I got inspired by the book “Talk like Ted” , really recommended!

Cheers,

Eduardo