Many of you have probably experienced this: You’ve been asked to speak at a conference. About 12 weeks before the conference date, the conference organizer sends you a Powerpoint template for you to use.
There are three things wrong with this:
1. It’s too soon. I have a better chance of sleeping with Tiger Woods than I do of having my presentation for the conference ready at that point. Even 12 days before the conference is a stretch for me. But hey, that’s my problem, not the conference organizers. And in the scheme of things, this problem isn’t nearly as bad as the next two.
2. The templates are butt-ugly. No offense (who am I fooling, of course I’m offending someone), but these templates are usually atrocious examples of poor design. The one I received the other day had two huge blue boxes — one at the top of the page, one at the bottom — and a space in the middle for the page header and text. Right, the header was below the blue box at the top. The bottom blue box had the logo and conference name in large font, of course. And I’m supposed to cram my content in the white space in the middle. This was one of the better designed templates I’ve received.
3. Templates are counterproductive. It’s a shame that conference organizers don’t understand this: Clinging to some fantasy of “conference branding” detracts from the attendee experience. Most Powerpoint presentations are poorly designed as it is. A conference -branded template doesn’t help the situation. The purpose of each slide in a deck is very simple (to describe, not to execute): To communicate an idea. Any extraneous text or graphics on a slide detracts from that goal.
What do conference organizers think? That attendees don’t know what conference they’re attending, and have to be reminded by each of the 600 slides that they’ll be subjected to looking at?
I, for one, will continue to ignore conference organizers’ requests to use their templates. I’m this close to telling them to take their templates and….
AGREED: “Clinging to some fantasy of ‘conference branding’ detracts from the attendee experience.”
I have seen some PowerPoint templates provided by conference organizers where there were over 40 words in the layout… before the presenter added their information. “The 20th Annual XYZ Show in Orlando, Florida. December 24-25, 2009. Sponsored by Acme Financial Group and the ABC Consulting Company, LLC.”
Sometimes, I only have one word on my slides. My one word gets lost — along with its intended impact — when it has to compete with a cluttered mess.
Sometimes, I have photos that are “full-bleed” (going from edge to edge of the frame). These don’t work in conference templates.
Ron, your observations are spot on. The first time I saw unified templates used at a conference, I thought it was a tribute to conference coordination. That was before I had to use one of these templates as a presenter. That’s a different story. Ultimately, it’s more important that the presentation tell a good story than be coordinated with the conference theme.
Like you, I can’t possibly have a presentation ready any sooner than the week of the conference. It’s not that I’m a procrastinator, but rather a perfectionist. I am constantly tweaking my presentations to include last minute thoughts, sometimes as late as the day of the presentation.
Generally, the only reason to request a presentation in advance is so that the slides can be pre-printed for the attendees. What a waste of resources. If an attendee wants a copy of the presentation, it can easily be sent to them or downloaded from the conference website, after the event.
I always arrive at the event with the presentation on my laptop and on a flash drive, so the conference coordinators don’t need it before then. Having been a conference coordinator, I know that the primary reason they ask for them in advance is they don’t trust the presenters. They don’t trust you to show up prepared and they’re afraid that you might have some content that they want to edit. Ongoing two-way communication prior to the event goes a long way toward allaying these fears.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mark Curran, rshevlin. rshevlin said: Finally put up a new blog post. Damn, not finding it easy to write these days. http://bit.ly/7lUTi4 [...]
JP and Mark: Thanks for your comments. We’re clearly on the same page here. I’m anticipating the day when a conference organizer says “Ron, we’d like you to speak about ‘personalization in financial services’” and then sends me their presentation template.
Amen.
I’ve been trying to hide behind my “Um, I use a Keynote for MAC” excuse to not use their butt-ugly templates. So far, it’s worked.
One other dirty little secret about education conferences and the hand-outs. A lot of, let’s call them “golfers” will grab the slides counting on them being poorly done (meaning written like a book) so they can get the gist of what the session was about and appear to have attended.
That’s when I switched to photos – very few words and even video. Messes that group up. Hehehehehe…..
Denise: You raise another point — AKA pet peeve: Handouts. I love when conference organizers say “if you don’t hand in your slides in time, you’ll be responsible for distributing your own presentation.” Dear conference organizers: Let me introduce you to this really cool new technology called EMAIL.
The only people who want paper handouts are your “golfers”. Nobody wants to lug binders home.
Hi All, A couple quick notes.
From an organizational perspective:
–CUES doesn’t use templates for our speakers–never have, never will.
–We’ve done a ton of work to reduce paper at our events, including providing handouts on Flash drives and posting handouts online.
–We still need to get presentations weeks ahead of an event so we can get the handouts loaded on the Flash drives and shipped.
–Some less tech-savvy audiences still demand paper handouts (and I’m a big fan of providing the best conference experience I can), which require longer lead times for printing.
From a personal standpoint:
–I don’t care if you give me the paper handouts or an electronic version that I can print, but I like to have a hard copy of the presentation in front of me when I’m in a session. I take notes like crazy, sketch diagrams, draw arrows to connect ideas, and so on. Handouts help me do that.
Recommendation to speakers: If you truly “can’t possibly have a presentation ready any sooner than the week of the conference,” work with conference coordinators to provide an early draft or an outline of the presentation for the flash drive or printed materials. Then provide the final draft in electronic form at the conference. Easy solution.
I’m just here to remind you Ron that your handouts for a conference where you’ll be presenting in June were due a week ago. I’ve been watching my email waiting and waiting for it – where is it??
Did I mention that the presentation template I recently received WAS NOT from CUES?
Ok I have to agree with some of Mr. Stephenson’s comments. We organize conferences and provide all content electronically. We provide it to the attendees via a secured website so they can view it during the session, print it whenever they want and use it for reference after the session.
But as an organizer, we do need the information ahead of time to get it to the attendees in a timely manner. It is afterall for their convenience – and they are the folks paying to attend.
Now speaking as an attendee, it is really annoying not to have copies of presentations available during the session. When they are not available I find myself taking notes on the slides and not listening as much as I would otherwise – I spend too much time trying to capture content, because it is not provided.
Finally, as a presenter, PPT is not that creative to start with and to stifle the creativity of the presenter serves no one – I give a much better presentation when I like the materials and when I can use them to help me present as well as inform the attendees. Overcrowded, dry PPTs are not a good place to start!
Oh Man, that really gets the beast in me out in the open.
My template is no template. Just the message.
Jodi: While I intended this post to be a bashing of the presentation templates, you raise another point that bears addressing. You said that:
“…as an organizer, we do need the information ahead of time to get it to the attendees in a timely manner. It is after all for their convenience – and they are the folks paying to attend.”
I’d challenge this point. Why would they ATTEND the conference if they could just get slides in advance? As a presenter, not only do I not want attendees looking at the slides on paper, and thumbing through in advance, but I strongly believe that it detracts from their experience to do so.
The value in the session (please back me up on this one, Denise Wymore) is in the presentation, NOT the handout.
While I agree that the handouts do not need to be a slide deck -I believe they need are tools to help with the take away from the session. They can be used in many ways – sometimes I use them to help beforehand to determine if I want to attend a session – and good handouts can help keep me focused on what the speaker what the speaker is saying and to keep me more engaged. I don’t typically get to go to a conference for personal enrichment – I often have to share the message and these supplemental materials hopefully make the take aways richer.
It is my hope that the speaker is dynamic enough that what they say brings their message alive and provides more meaning.
Depending on the topic, venue and type of session sometimes handouts are not needed – they might even spoil a surpsie. At the end of the day, it is about the topic, the speaker and the message. Getting the handouts in advance for me does not typically detract from my experience.
Ron, You’re right that the value of the session is in the presentation and not the handouts. I’d argue that if attendees are able to get the gist of a session through the handouts, then the presenter needs to work on his handouts a bit.
I also believe that handouts don’t have to be the slide deck; they can be other learning tools that enhance the session and promote interaction.
And I guess it would help if people would proof read their handouts or posts as the case may be (for me anyway!) ……it would decrease typos and improve on the message…..good night all!
[...] • Take This Template And… « Marketing Tea Party by Ron Shevlin [...]