{"id":3299,"date":"2015-04-27T08:18:22","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T07:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=3299"},"modified":"2015-04-21T19:43:55","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T18:43:55","slug":"are-online-presentations-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/are-online-presentations-different\/","title":{"rendered":"Are online presentations different?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Not long ago I asked in one of the remarkable <a title=\"Sarah\" href=\"http:\/\/www.saraharrow.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sarah Arrow<\/a>\u2019s private groups what people needed to know about when it comes to presentations. I got a lot of questions: this blog is a response to the first of them. :)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Do you do things differently when you\u2019re presenting online compared to face to face?<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong>Short answer<\/strong>: yes<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><strong>Longer answer<\/strong>: yes, obviously.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Okay, time to be less facetious.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I\u2019m not going to talk here about the technical issues such as making sure you have enough light, with no background noise and a plain background etc. Surely those things are obvious these days, right? But if not &#8220;google is your friend&#8221;\u00a0:) Or for some thoughts on the more subtle stuff, see this <a title=\"Google\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sarkemedia.com\/google-hangouts-set-look-good\/\" target=\"_blank\">recorded google hangout with Marlene Hielema<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Remember, when you\u2019re live, in front of an audience it\u2019s much easier for them to get a feel for your personality and your passion. And while it\u2019s true that the technology is always getting better and the \u2018personal\u2019 of online presentations is improving it\u2019s still true that interacting with someone through a computer is less engaging than interacting face to face (although there are some people I\u2019d rather mitigate via the medium of Skype, for example,<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>where for example, I can turn them down! :) )<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That means you need to turn it up a notch. <strong>Just a notch<\/strong> &#8211; you don\u2019t want to over-do it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">While this sounds easy, on a technical level this isn\u2019t quite as simple\u00a0as it sounds because the camera-based nature of an online presentation means that movement is exaggerated. If all you can see of someone is their face, a simple raising of an eyebrow is as big a gesture as waving your arm is, in a live presentation. And it\u2019s harder to control things as apparently subtle as your facial gestures as it is\u00a0to control your gesticulations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Which brings us to the fact that your audience might not see your hands and how you gesticulate when you\u2019re online &#8211; if they see your face at all because some videos can just be screenshots etc don&#8217;t forget. Like a lot of professional speakers I use my hands to reinforce what I\u2019m saying (note: that\u2019s <b>not<\/b> the same as waving them around!) The worst thing, from an audience\u2019s point of view, is for your hand to occasionally slide into view: don\u2019t worry, it\u2019s not the end of the world if you do it a few times but don\u2019t do it all the time &#8211; that way it gets distracting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">My suggestion is to look at how far from your body the camera is and to make sure you know whether your hands are in-frame or not. In or out &#8211; pick one\u2026 don\u2019t have them on the edge or periphery of what\u2019s visible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I said earlier on that you needed turn it up a bit. That is, essentially, because without the You In The Room, energy gets lost between you and your audience. A few of the things I\u2019ve found to be handy when doing online presentations that help a bit with this are:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">faster moving slides: when you\u2019re live your slides should be designed for whatever you\u2019re saying and that means if you need them to move on quickly they should&#8230; but if you need to linger on one image, you should. In fact there\u2019s a very strong (very!) argument for using simple image slides and talking over them, but that doesn\u2019t work so well online. Online you need change not only when you \u2018should\u2019 (as above) but <em>also<\/em> when your audience needs to be nudged. Whisper it &#8211; but I even resort to bullet points online sometimes, just so that there\u2019s something visual happening more often than there otherwise would be<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">use technology like google hangouts so that you can flip between showing slides and showing your talking head. Both are handy in their different ways, but by now we\u2019re all sick to death of the video-capture of someone\u2019s screen as they provide a voice-over for what they\u2019re doing. YouTube is over-full of this kind of stuff. If you\u2019ve got a second screen where you can have your slides pre-loaded, so much the better<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">don\u2019t sweat the perfection. Now\u2026 brace yourself\u2026. because this goes against my advice on face to face presentations, where I talk about \u201cdoing the swan thing\u201d and not letting your audience see you sweat. (What I mean by this is that you shouldn&#8217;t\u00a0show them the hard work, it undermines your credibility and authority) Online what you need to add is personality. Don\u2019t get me wrong, being bloody amateur isn\u2019t a good idea, but<b> just a little<\/b> hesitation can do wonders in terms of your personalisation. Absolute perfection can look false<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">a second person helps.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>This person might be handy in terms of running the technology so that you can concentrate on what you\u2019re saying or &#8211; more often perhaps &#8211; they can be handy in terms of asking questions and keeping the presentation more like a conversation. Interviews are an easy example. If the interviewer is good the audience will identify with him-or-her so that they feel they\u2019re \u201crepresented\u201d and that <b>their<\/b> questions are being asked by the interviewer and (hopefully) answered by you.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"jbox gray\" >  <div  class=\"jbox-title gray\">By the way<\/div><div  class=\"jbox-content\">it should go without saying that I\u2019m not suggesting that you go live without practice and rehearsal! You should be on top of your technology and know how to use it!\u00a0 You just don\u2019t want to look over-slick. Given the clunky interface of a lot of online presentation software, that\u2019s less of a problem than it might be otherwise! :)<\/div><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong>One final, important note<\/strong>&#8230;You\u2019ll also find you need to be more explicit and literal in online presentations. Using a machine means that subtleties like irony don\u2019t work nearly as well in your audience\u2019s heads as it does in yours. Spell things out &#8211; in words of one syllable. (Actually it won\u2019t be nearly as blunt and blatant as you feel it is, trust me on this: it just feels like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">So there you go &#8211; this isn&#8217;t a comprehensive list, but it&#8217;s a start! :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not long ago I asked in one of the remarkable Sarah Arrow\u2019s private groups what people needed to know about when it comes to presentations. I got a lot of questions: this blog is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3299"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3312,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3299\/revisions\/3312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}