Presenting Ideas

It's that time of year, time to try and enhance my portfolio/vita by submitting presentation abstracts for conferences. I presented three times during the last academic year, once locally at an interest group, once at a state level conference and once nationally. Late this summer, I declined an invitation to present for the first time. Why? I re-wrote the project on which I had based my abstract making the presentation irrelevant (oops).

I met with a COE professor earlier this week to discuss submitting for a spring conference. I have presented with her before and she quite simply hates PowerPoint. We have something planned, so all is well, but I was intrigued after reading a post on Argh Ink this morning featuring Ignite (check out the comments for more discussion).

"If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers." - Ignite

After searching a bit, the story telling element seems to be key. As with any other presentations it relies on preparation, quality information, and visual elements are key. I have been on the short end of a panel presentation on more than one occasion, forced to significantly whittle away my prepared discussion, and wonder if this might be one way to eliminate that problem.

• Slideshare: Ignite Presentation Tips
• How to Give a Successful Ignite Presentation
• YouTube - iGNiTe's Channel
• Presentation Zen: The Ignite Presentation Method
• Wikipedia: Ignite (event)