Wow Your Audience With A Nonlinear Presentation · This document presents tips, considerations, and best practices taken from Ken Molay’s webinar on how to give a nonlinear webinar

All Materials Copyright © 2013 Webinar Success

Wow Your Audience With

A Nonlinear Presentation

Key concepts and guidelines on how to create and

deliver nonlinear webinars

A White Paper by Ken Molay, President:

217 Kilbreck Drive ● Cary, NC 27511-6343 ● (919) 372-1937 www.wsuccess.com

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INTRODUCTION This document presents tips, considerations, and best practices taken from Ken Molay’s webinar on how to give a nonlinear webinar presentation. Business presentations commonly start with an agenda slide. Agendas shift focus away from content specifics and instead concentrate on structure and order of presentation. They say to the audience, “I don’t care what you are most interested in, because this is the way I built the presentation and there is nothing you can do about it.” Attendees are left to wait for the part they are most interested in. Knowing that “the good stuff” (whatever that may be for them) is being held up by the presenter’s structuring choices makes them impatient and resentful of the webinar. “I could have read this faster and gone straight to the part I care about.” By the way, this is the same reason I don’t like distributing copies of my slide presentation before a webinar. Attendees start looking forward and waiting impatiently for me to catch up. The alternative, of course, is to give the audience a say in priorities and time spent on different aspects of the presentation. Instead of emphasizing the order of the information, you can concentrate on the value to be provided.

PLANNING AND PREPARATION At first blush, a nonlinear presentation might seem easier to assemble. You don’t have to worry so much about overall flow and segues between each slide. Instead, you can just bounce around between topic points and talk about whatever the audience asks for. Unfortunately, this turns out not to be the case. A well-developed nonlinear presentation will probably take you MORE time to create than a traditional linear presentation. As with so many performance arts, the art of making it look easy and carefree to the audience depends on careful planning, setup, and practice. Planning starts with collecting all the content points you want to deliver or that you think the audience is likely to care about. You need a way to sort, group, and move these around. If you like tangible objects, lay out index cards on the floor and put them in piles. Or put sticky notes on a whiteboard. Online you could use a standard document outline, but mind mapping software is an even better tool. Google “mind map software” for options. One free tool is available at: http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page


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You are looking for items that should be presented together, topic divisions that form natural groups, content that can be presented at a high level with an optional drill-down to more data, and content with dependencies that require prior knowledge before they can be discussed. Take your major groupings and try to arrange them in a flow or storyline. The important thing is to come up with a definite start and end to the journey through your topic. These act as anchors, supporting the flexible paths between them. As you place your section groupings between the endpoints, look for places where you can add options for jumping from one group to another out of order, or options for going into detail or moving on.


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A good way to help come up with relevant and engaging content pieces is to simply ask your audience what they want you to talk about! There are several ways to do this, requiring varying levels of technology and sophistication: 1) Add a question field on your webinar registration form. This is my least favourite method. It adds another information request to the registration process, it forces the registrant to stop his or her forward progress while they think about a question for you (which they weren’t prepared for), and it gives them only the one chance to participate. 2) Use an online survey tool such as www.surveymonkey.com – These can be inexpensive and easy to use. Distribute a link to registrants in their confirmation and reminder emails. Use the software’s reporting tools to gather submissions. 3) Code your own HTML web form specifically for the question. This gives you more control over branding and gives you the ability to embed the “ask a question” functionality into a web page. The marketing landing page with the event description is a great place to put this functionality. Of course this requires web coding skills and access to your web pages.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/


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4) Ask for email replies. Give registrants an email address to send their questions to. This method is easiest to implement, as you don’t have to set up anything to catch responses, but I find that it gets the fewest responses. Once you start getting representative questions, you may be able to find new ways to think about your topic, areas where some people want additional detail, or subjects that have consensus interest. I often place a pre-submitted question on a slide before introducing the associated nugget of information. This shows that I am being driven by audience interests, even if I introduce the material in my own choice of sequence during the presentation.

Now that you have a structure and branching points identified, you have two pieces of “event mechanics” to formalize. Firstly, each branch needs a way to way to jump to it and return back to the main flow. In PowerPoint, the most common mechanisms are:

Hyperlinked text

Action buttons (visible or invisible)

Direct slide access by slide number

Custom shows I will discuss how to use these later in this document.


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Secondly, you need to select an audience feedback mechanism that will let them direct you. Here are three common methods:

Hand Raise – For example: “Click the Raise Hand button in your conferencing console if you would like me to go into more detail on this point.”

Type In – You can ask people for comments, but this gets unwieldy with large audience sizes.

Polls – You can ask for guidance on what to do next via polls. There are two sub-categories that I will mention.

A “What Next” poll asks viewers to make a single choice as to the next topic you should visit. This works fine the first time you come to a branch, but if you come back to that same branching point, you typically want to remove from the list the choice they already made. This is not too difficult if you keep the selection list to three choices. The first time through, you show the poll with all three choices. Then you create three secondary polls. Each eliminates one of the options. During the session, you have to select the correct poll to match the choice they made the first time through.


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The second way to use polls when hitting a branch point repeatedly is to use a multiple selections poll the first time you get to the branch. Ask attendees to pick their top two or three interest areas. When the cumulative results are tallied, note the percentages and say you will visit the topics in the order of group interest. Then you do not need to re-poll the audience each time you come back to the branch… Just move to the next topic based on the initial poll results.

(Percentages do not add up to 100% when allowing multiple selections)

Your final step in planning and preparation is to create a cheat sheet for yourself listing the major section points and their slide numbers so you can jump directly to them if necessary. Also note reminders of any action buttons (especially invisible ones) so you know where you need to click in order to activate a jump.


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CAUTIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS As I mentioned earlier, nonlinear presentations take extra work on your part. You should ask yourself whether it is justified for the presentation you are giving. Here are some questions that can help you determine whether a nonlinear presentation is the right approach to use:

Are you presenting to a varied audience with differing backgrounds and interests? It is hard to satisfy everyone with a preplanned linear presentation in these cases, so letting the audience guide you may create greater satisfaction.

Is your content divisible into sections or “chunks?” If your material must build from base principals to more advanced discussion, a nonlinear approach is counterproductive. Nonlinearity works best when you have several things to cover that could be presented in an arbitrary order.

Are you comfortable adapting your presentation on the fly? It is easy to lose track of time in a nonlinear presentation and end up unable to finish your content. You also need to be very familiar with your content structure and with the web conferencing software. This is not the right approach for a casual guest presenter to use.

Do you have sufficient lead time before the presentation date? You will spend extra time creating and testing your presentation. It also needs to be “locked down” from changes ahead of time. So this is the wrong approach when working with reviewers or co-contributors who might want to make last minute alterations.

You should also remember that nonlinearity is not an “all or nothing” design choice. You can make a traditional sequenced presentation and spice it up with just one or two nonlinear components. Sometimes I merely add a few topic-specific placeholder slides to display during Q&A. As a question comes in related to a topic area, I can show an appropriate slide while I talk about it. It adds a little visual interest and helps the audience to focus during a long Q&A period. Don’t relegate total control of your presentation to the audience. You need to remain the commander of your ship. Attendees have come to the webinar to learn from you, and they trust you to manage flow, timing, and delivery of content. If your session starts taking too many detours and “detail dips”, you can and should cut down on optional flow patterns. Just because you have built in the capability for a branching point in your material does not mean you have to use it. Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to tell the audience that you are going to press straight on to the next topic in the name of time management or better comprehension.


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When you create a nonlinear presentation, it is important to share this fact with other members of your team. If you don’t prepare reviewers, they will tell you that your slides are out of sequence and don’t make sense in that order. You usually cannot simply make a PDF of your slide deck to be used as a handout… You will probably have to create a separate document that flows sequentially from start to end. If you are using support personnel to help you display polls, make sure they understand which polls are used in which circumstances… Especially if you use my “What next?” polling methodology described earlier, where you have to select from similar polls the second time you hit a branch point. If you have multiple presenters, make sure they understand how things work. They should be ready to jump in with their segment whenever it comes up in the webinar… They cannot relax and just wait for their section to come up in sequence. This can be an excellent way to bring in a subject-matter expert who is uncomfortable presenting… When you hit a detail drill-down, you can bring them in as expert backup and then hand it back to you to continue the main sequence. Nonlinear slide decks need to be locked down well before the live webinar date. If you allow last minute alterations you are almost certain to corrupt a branch point or a custom show or a critical poll. At the least, it can throw your “cheat sheet” out of synchronization with slide numbers. Make sure everyone on the team knows what their final deadline is and that you really will not allow slide changes after that point. This early deadline also allows you to rehearse your movement through the presentation slides and test each branch. Make no mistake… You have extra pressure above and beyond just knowing your content and what you want to say. You need to be completely comfortable with how you will ask for audience feedback, where it comes in the presentation, and how you move from one point to another. I have gotten in trouble just by automatically using the down arrow to move to my next slide when I should have clicked on the slide instead to activate an invisible hyperlink. Once you get out of sequence, it can be very distracting and unnerving as you try to get back to the proper point in your flow.


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POWERPOINT TRICKS In this section I will try to share some tactics for using PowerPoint to move out of slide-order sequence during a slideshow. I chose PowerPoint for two reasons… It still has the largest market share of all business presentation tools and it is the technology I know the best. I recognize and acknowledge that other presentation tools exist and are completely appropriate for business presentations. Macintosh users have Keynote, with an excellent feature set. iPad users have Haiku Deck. Prezi has some spectacular functionality for moving nonlinearly through a presentation. But for practical reasons I will limit this discussion to PowerPoint. I am also using PowerPoint 2010 as my base level for demonstrations. This strikes a mid-level balance between the newer PowerPoint 2013 and older versions still in use. Please recognize that you may need to adjust some of my tips to your specific product version. I suggest reading through these in order and making sure you understand how each one works before moving on to the next trick. Each one builds on knowledge presented in the earlier steps.

1) Direct Slide Access This is easy to describe and to use! It takes no setup and is merely a slideshow feature that many people are unaware of. While in slideshow mode, you can enter a number on your computer keyboard and press the Enter key. Your display will instantly show the entered slide number. Create a cheat sheet of key slide numbers and you have magical access to any part of your presentation at any time. I like using this technique during Q&A to show a placeholder slide that relates to the subject we are discussing. Then I can bounce back to the “Next Question” slide.

2) Text Hyperlinks This is another easy technique, but must be set up ahead of time during slide preparation. It then becomes available for use during your slideshow. If you have text on a slide, you can highlight it and right-click your mouse. Choose Hyperlink… from the popup menu. Instead of entering a web URL as the hyperlink, look to the vertical strip of commands in the far left column. Choose the second item: “Place in This Document”. You can make the link take you to any given slide in the deck.


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3) Disappearing Hyperlinks When you create a hyperlink, PowerPoint formats it automatically and you cannot override the text color or underline. Or can you??? You cannot get rid of the underline until you read tip #8, but you can change the color PowerPoint uses for unvisited and visited links. Look under “Design” and choose “Colors”. Then choose “Create New Theme Colors”. You can change the color associated with “Hyperlink” and “Followed Hyperlink”. If you make the Followed Hyperlink color the same as your background, the link magically disappears on screen once you have clicked it and later come back to the same slide. This is the way to reduce choice lists to only show unused options.

By the way, the only way to reset which internal links are followed/unfollowed is to close the presentation deck and reload it in PowerPoint. It does not reset simply by going out of slideshow mode and back in again.


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4) Custom Shows When you link to a slide, the slideshow continues forward from that point in sequence. What if you want your link to show a few slides and then return back to where you were? PowerPoint lets you construct these sidetracks using a feature called Custom Shows. First you set up which slides should be included in the special subset. Do this by clicking on “Slide Show” in the main command ribbon, then choosing “Custom Shows”. Click “New” and add the slides in any desired order to your show list. Give the custom show an identifiable name. Close the Custom Shows menu. Now when you make a Hyperlink to a Place in This Document, you will see your Custom Shows listed in the menu. Click on the title of the desired show and then check the box labelled “Show and return”. Your linked text will now display the slides and bring you back to where you activated the link from.

5) Action Buttons When inserting shapes on a slide, one of your choices is to insert an “Action Button”. These are boxes with predefined symbols in them. As soon as you put the shape on your slide, PowerPoint opens a dialog asking you where it should link to when pressed. Your options are the same as when dealing with hyperlinked text, but you don’t have to worry about text colors and underlines.

6) Actions On Shapes You are not limited to using PowerPoint’s set of action buttons. You can insert an action on any shape on a slide. Right click it and you have the option of adding a hyperlink, just as you can with text.

7) Invisible Action Shapes Once you have a hyperlinked shape, you can change the color of the outline and fill to invisible. Drag the shape over some text or other objects on the screen and you have an active hyperlink that does not change the formatting of the text underneath. This is your way to get around those pesky underlines that PowerPoint inserts. You can also move your invisible shape to the corner of a slide. This now becomes your secret way to change the navigation order in your deck without the audience noticing. If you advance the slide normally, it just moves to the next slide in sequence. But if you move your mouse down to the active corner and click, you jump to another point in your presentation. When combined with a Custom Show, this is a great way to selectively show or bypass detail slides related to a topic point.


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8) Active Type-In This is not a navigation aid, but I find it quite useful in nonlinear presentations as a way of making the audience a more active part of the process. It also comes in handy when using multiple selections on a poll to establish presentation priorities. It lets you add permanent text to a slide during the slideshow without having to escape out to designer mode. Warning: This is an advanced technique that may confuse casual PowerPoint users. There are also some quirky aspects to using it in practice. Your first step is to activate a feature that PowerPoint normally hides. Go to “File -> Options -> Customize Ribbon” and check the box for “Developer”. After clicking OK, you will get a new command in your ribbon. Click “Developer” and you get a set of tools you can embed on your slides. The second icon in the list is a text input box.

Select that textbox icon and drag a rectangle onto your slide. Now comes the tricky part. In the Developer commands, click “Properties” while the input box is selected. A confusing menu of options opens up. These let you change the cosmetics and operation of the input box. The most important ones are:

BackColor: You can change this to the background color on your slide to help the input box disappear as a separate element.

Font: This lets you change the size and font of text typed in the box.

ForeColor: This changes the color of text typed in the box.

MultiLine: Change this to “True” in order to let you enter multiple lines of text in the box. WARNING: You must also set EnterKeyBehavior to “True” to let you move to a new line while typing!

SpecialEffect: Change this from the default “Sunken” to “Flat” in order to get rid of the automatic border lines that offset the box. This is necessary if you want your input box to be invisible on top of your slide content.


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Play with the other settings at your own risk. There are two important notes relating to the use of an active type-in box. 1) Anything you type during the session becomes a permanent part of the slide. Be careful about saving your presentation after using this, since it will save your typed data along with your slide. 2) PowerPoint uses macros to enable the type-in functionality. This creates security warning messages when you attempt to open the file. To avoid these, save the file in .PPTM format. This enables macros and ensures that the type-in will work properly.


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SUMMARY Adding nonlinear elements to a presentation can increase audience engagement and focus information delivery more rapidly on the topics of greatest interest to attendees. It gives audience members a sense of participation in guiding the discussion, which makes them more receptive to the material. You can start very simply with a few placeholder slides related to different topic points. Use PowerPoint’s direct access functionality to jump directly to relevant slides instead of moving systematically through the entire slide deck in sequence. As you become more comfortable with this approach, you can add additional branching elements including polls, hyperlinks, and custom shows. You need to weigh the added benefits of nonlinear presentations against the extra demands they place on you as a content creator and presenter. Creating and practicing a well-constructed nonlinear presentation takes more time and effort than a traditional presentation. Make sure to plan for the extra commitment on your part. You also need to make sure that other team members involved in the webinar understand the approach you are using and how it affects their contributions. I welcome your comments and feedback about this subject. Please feel free to email me at [email protected]. I wish you great success with your next nonlinear presentation!

mailto:[email protected]

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Wow Your Audience With A Nonlinear Presentation · This document presents tips, considerations, and best practices taken from Ken Molay’s webinar on how to give a nonlinear webinar