Ask HN: How to best present to semi tech/quant-savvy audience?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32421971

4 6 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Recently I have found myself presenting to senior management at a bank. I have found these presentations go one of three ways.

1) Fairly well but without a deep audience understanding 2) Fairly well with the audience hyper-fixated on the wrong detail 3) Fairly well with the audience hyper-fixated on the right detail 4) Fairly poorly with a few pity questions asked at the end

Because I keep getting asked back I'm sure I am on to something. But I really want to take these to the next level and put myself in buckets 1, 2 and 3 while avoiding bucket 4. I know due to natural variation in outcomes that there will be some 4's even for the best presenters.

Obviously this is context-dependent but I want to hear from the community.

themodelplumber• 4 years ago

Ah. Presentations can really be annoying in those ways.

You're already looking at outcomes, so to add to your analysis I'd focus on something more like an experimental framework for yourself. Needed outcome tightly defined, test group, stimulus, response. That's a pretty good model for this stuff. Then you can start to hypothesize and try specific new things. Things that commenters here would just have no idea about because we're not there. Those are big.

I would expect yourself to come up with at least 3-4 ways to rescue yourself from outcome #4 if that's what you're looking to do.

At the same time I would recommend doing your best to focus on the advantages of group work (light touch, easy outcome) vs. one-on-one work (deep work, quality outcome). If they overlap too much it can get awkward and difficult--you can get that one person who it's really easy to talk to the whole time, or you can get the speaker/presenter reputation for being way too intense, trying to do training rather than presenting. Or trying to fix problems in person rather than let the audience go off and try breaking stuff themselves.

Over time I'd expect you to document your suite of tools for this stuff and then write a bestseller. ;-)

Anyway hope that helps some, good luck.

BTW for tech groups specifically: 1) Engage their competence when you can; tell them what stumps or troubles you (relevant to topic) for example 2) Find those in the group who are looking to (hidden agenda) perform, and those who are looking to socialize, and help them do that for your benefit and 3) Study their shared sense of humor and play to it so you can take some pressure off yourself with their implicit permission.

superchroma• 4 years ago

It's maybe very surface level advice, but I've found that by expressing things at a detail level the audience operates at and tailoring for them a bit, you can ensure they'll follow along. You probably do this already, but it's surprising how many people do a deep dive and break out raw data, charts and walls of text and try and bore their audience to sleep.

mamonster• 4 years ago

If it is senior management, my best advice would be to make absolute sure that you give them a complete picture of the bottom line impact(i.e how much money will this take and how much money will it save for them). IMO if you focus on this you will almost always fall into buckets 1 and 2.

Might be a bit controversial, but if the audience isn't so tech savvy then you can leave out a lot of the technical jargon because once they approve a project it won't really be their problem. Them not asking you at the end about the tech specifics(which I understood in your comment as bucket 4) might not necessarily be a bad thing.

akg_67• 4 years ago

Who is your audience? What is their background? What are you trying to achieve? What do you want audience to take away from your presentation?

1) Fairly well but without a deep audience understanding

Have some backup slides with details that you can flip to when you encounter keen audience willing to deep dive.

2) Fairly well with the audience hyper-fixated on the wrong detail

Don't address every detail in your presentation. Give your audience the chance to ask questions and lead them down the path you are well prepared for by leaving some gaps in details in that direction.

3) Fairly well with the audience hyper-fixated on the right detail

This is the ultimate goal of successful presentation.

nivertech2• 4 years ago

I'm familiar with the following frameworks:

  - Public Narrative (Story of Self, Story of Us, Story of Now)
  - LOTS (Language Of The Senses)
  - BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
  - Situation, Complication, Resolution (with order adapted to the audience)
  - finding the Villain (works great for crowdfunding) - make sure they will not find that the Villain is you;)
  - "The best pitches are conversations"
  - and the good old: Problem - Solution

IMO BLUF and Complication-Situation-Resolution are best for execs-kind of audience.

nivertech2• 4 years ago

Relevant discussion:

How to Present to Executives (lethain.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32409842

Ask HN: How to best present to semi tech/quant-savvy audience?

Related Stories