Workshop on High Impact Presentation Skills

A half day workshop on” High Impact Presentation Skills” was organized by BKC Knowledge Network and Bai Ratanbai Gharda Memorial Library on 16 March, 2018.

The well attended event sourced together nearly 33 participants from most of the well known premier institutions.

Shiv Khera has aptly said “Leadership is about persuasion, presentation and people skills” and this suits all of us in every walk of life and especially in the academic sector.

As we all might agree, our library profession also encompasses all the three P’s stated above by Shiv Khera. We create presentations for orientation to new students, faculty and various committees. A presentation, in essence, could also be a brochure which says “Know Your Library”. Most of us include more of text (textual matter) and less of images. The success of any presentation depends upon the way information is captured (understood) by the audience. So, you might agree that the presentation should be appealing at all times. Very often, we tend to use the same format, layout, design, colour combination, bullets for strong points and our presentation lasts longer in time rather than in the minds of the people.

This workshop which I attended beautifully focused on the art and science of presentation and changed my whole perspective about it.

Dr. Dhanashree Date (Head - IRC, TCS - Mumbai) was the invited speaker for this workshop. Dr. Date shared her insights about “Presentation”. Few very important points shared by her are as follows:

1. Create a story using the 5 W’s - Why, Where, When, Who, Which
2. Make a mental note of the audience and the space of presentation
3. Do not be too loud while presenting as you might drain out the end of the session
4. Take a break after 10 minutes as watching the same presenter for more than 10 minutes dilutes interest
5. During this break, make your presentation interesting by including relevant images or videos
6. Minimize text, use infographics
7. Acknowledge and give due credit to the resources you have used

The workshop was focussed on Presentation Using Pecha Kucha format.

Pecha Kucha is essentially a presentation (software format ) style in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each. This presentation format was devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham Architecture.

Pecha Kucha is a very engaging style. I feel that this style of presenting can also be applied to our regular MS Power Point Presentations and Prezi too.

I was fortunate to be a participant of this workshop. Thanks to SFIT and BKCN!

Sucheta