Technical Presentation

7 Key excerpts on "Technical Presentation"

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  eBook - ePub

  Engineering Speaking by Design

  Delivering Technical Presentations with Real Impact

  • Edward J. Rothwell, Michael J. Cloud(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  4.  Your goal as a technical speaker is to communicate information to an appropriate target audience. In other words, a presentation is intended to communicate what you know to an interested, reasonably prepared listener.

  5.  Producing a formal presentation just to meet a deadline or attain some other reward is subject to the old rule of garbage in, garbage out.

  6.  If given the latitude, pick a topic you’re really interested in. Your enthusiasm will contribute much to the quality of your presentation. 7.  It helps to think about what you know, and how you know it, before trying to present it to someone else. Doing so might even help you become a better subject-matter expert.

  8.  Good technical speech is accurate and appropriate for a particular target audience. It’s essential to consider the target listener’s background, purposes, and maturity level. This is especially the case with mathematical maturity.

  9.  If you dislike formal speaking but enjoy pleasing your customers as an engineer, then think of each audience member as a customer.

  10.  Gather pertinent information on the target venue well before the speaking event. Study environmental factors such as acoustics, lighting, temperature, humidity, seating, and outside noise. Test the projection equipment if possible, making sure it works with your own laptop computer.

  11.  Get feedback early and often. (And, as a professional courtesy, provide feedback to others who seek help preparing for their speaking engagements.)

  12.  Thinking like an engineer is not just a paradigm for giving a talk; it is also a framework for evaluating the formal talks of others. Engineers must review and critique the information in many oral presentations.

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  eBook - ePub

  Teaching Professional and Technical Communication

  A Practicum in a Book

  • Tracy Bridgeford(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Utah State University Press

    (Publisher)

  If you are going to require presentations of engineering, science, or technical students, you are in for an interesting ride. Although the practices have been shifting a bit in the past few years, these types of presentations are steeped in longstanding, ill-formed traditions that must necessarily be challenged by you—the communication instructor. You must challenge not only your students but also yourself and other engineering or science instructors. Your efforts, however, will bring amazingly positive change.

  The genre of Technical Presentations holds many subgenres: the design review, the recommendation, the proposal, the pitch, the status report, the budget review, the training session, the pure information transmission, and the design review (to name a few). The basic techniques we discuss herein apply to all those subgenres, but the speaker must do the necessary work of determining audience, purpose, timing, and persuasive strategy. That task must be done, anew, each and every time the talk is given.

  But let’s back up a bit and try to understand the problem from a particular point of view. Many students in STEM fields have been told from a very young age, maybe early middle school, that they are talented in the technical fields and that they will not have to worry about the other skills, like communication, very much—if at all. They are told this by teachers, advisors, and parents alike. They are told, for years, a mythology that their technical work will speak for itself and that they will not have to fuss about, communicating it well. Such advice is a terrible disservice to these students, who will be communicating every day in complex circumstances, relaying difficult concepts to varied audiences who all have diverse motivations for accepting or denying what these students will be telling them.

  All these factors can have an impact on an unsure young college speaker in a technical communication course. On the whole, Technical Presentations of all kinds tend to be fraught with many poor habits. As part of that sad set of habits, slides are often to blame. Whether it is fair to assign the blame to the slides or the presenter who created the slides, the fact is that quite a few problems can be solved with a retooling of slides’ use.

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  eBook - PDF

  A Guide to Writing as an Engineer

  • David F. Beer, David A. McMurrey(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Engineering presentations can take many forms, as Figure 9-1 indicates, each with a specific purpose and organizational requirements. Status or Progress Report Technical Proposal Sales Presentation Technical Seminar Paper Recommendation Report Product Information Tutorial Project Result Report Figure 9-1 Just a few of the many kinds of presentations engineers find themselves giving. Preparing the Presentation 181 Make sure you know what you are getting into, what is expected of you, who your audience is going to be, and what you want to accomplish by talking to them. Decide exactly what you want your listeners to take away from your talk. Then you will be on solid ground while preparing the remaining features of your presentation. Determine Your Time Frame It has been said that no speech is ever too long for the speaker or too short for the listener. The cardinal rule here is never to speak longer than you are supposed to. To avoid annoying busy people or offending speakers who come after you, check how much time you have been allotted. Knowing your time limit will also help you decide how much detail you can go into, how much time you should allow for questions or discussion, and how much time you can spend on an introduction and conclusion or recommendations if you have some. As Figure 9-2 illustrates, how deeply you go into different aspects of a typical engineering topic is related to how much time you have to speak. The tops of the pyramids in the figure represent the least you could say on a topic—perhaps a single sentence—while the true base of the pyramid (unseen in the illustration) represents everything that could possibly be said. This is perhaps why we almost always impose time limits on speakers; otherwise they might go on forever! It’s been claimed that any subject can be covered in virtually any amount of time. A speaker could compress the creation of the universe into three or four sentences—or fewer—if necessary.

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  Available until 27 Nov |Learn more

  Civil Engineer's Handbook of Professional Practice

  • Karen Hansen, Kent Zenobia, Karen Lee Hansen, Kent E. Zenobia(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  www.wiley.com/go/cehandbook , Example PowerPoint Presentation. This presentation was prepared in response to the sample “Request for Proposal” discussed in Chapter 4 and included in Appendix A, Example RFP. The presentation is the culmination of the Final Feasibility Study Report prepared by the student group that called themselves CVision Engineering. The Feasibility Study Report is also presented in Appendix C, Example Feasibility Study Report for consideration as a good example of a report.

  Summary

  Communication is the process of exchanging ideas, information, feelings, or data from one party to another. The information transfer can occur verbally, nonverbally, electronically, physically (by touch), or in writing. Complete communication occurs when all modes of information transfer are engaged. An acknowledgment of information receipt and a brief reiteration of the message by the listener will provide the sender with an opportunity to confirm or deny the accuracy of the transmission. Examples of efficient communication tools are discussed and included for the engineer's use. Examples of typical short engineering reports and medium-length technical reports are also included for reference.

  Valuable Lessons I Learned from My Clients Bridget Crenshaw Mabunga, Adjunct Professor and Technical Writer

  It's amazing how easy it is to forget our audience. Whether through written or oral communication, it is imperative to understand the needs of your audience. When I teach I consider what my students may or may not be familiar with, and I try to be as transparent as possible. The same transparency is necessary in my work with clients. When in doubt, I make sure to clarify my communication and check in with the client or student to verify that we have a shared understanding of the expectation or goal at hand.

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  eBook - ePub

  Introduction to Engineering

  An Assessment and Problem Solving Approach

  • Quamrul H. Mazumder(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  The better you understand what you are presenting, the more comfortable you will be when making your presentation. Ideally, presenters will have ample knowledge of their particular presentation topic, but this is not always the case. For example, there may be a time when an engineer is asked to present information on a project on which she is collaborating with many other engineers. While that engineer may have ample knowledge of specific aspects of that project, she may have only a general idea of the current status of other components of the project. If the audience is expecting information that requires a more detailed knowledge of other project components, the presenter may not actually possess knowledge of the content she needs. If at all possible, the presenter should defer to the team member that has the most relevant knowledge for the intended audience. Otherwise, the presenter should make special efforts to gain the necessary knowledge prior to the presentation. A strong grasp of the material being presented greatly increases the presenter’s confidence and comfort level and is a key contributor to a successful presentation.

  16.2.1.3 Presentation Software

  If you have a projector available for your presentation, you may choose to take advantage of presentation software as a visual aid. Presentation software, such as PowerPoint or Prezi, allows the presenter to graphically organize his presentations and include visuals to help keep the audience engaged. Most commonly, presentation software allows the presenter to add information or graphics to a series of slides in order to reinforce the information being relayed.

  One of the most common mistakes that presenters make with presentation software is filling their slides with long, wordy text and reading directly to the audience from their slides. While the slides may serve to keep the presenter on task, they are meant to enhance the information that the presenter is relaying, not replace it. Instead, bullets with keywords or short phrases should be on the slides, along with relevant images or other carefully selected multimedia whenever possible (University of Texas at Austin 2014). Presenters then expand on whatever short keywords or phrases are on the slide.

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  eBook - PDF

  Oral Communication Excellence for Engineers and Scientists

  • Judith Shaul Norback(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Springer

    (Publisher)

  60 5. PRESENTATION: DISPLAYING KEY INFORMATION When presenting the graphic, provide brief verbal information on main points. Once or twice I’ve seen engineering students present graphs or charts in silence, expecting the audience to identify the main point. This makes the audience work, instead of you doing the work for them. Some presenters opt to have the purpose in text on the slide next to or above or below the graphic. This is similar to the “assertion-evidence method” identified and studied by Professor Michael Alley at Penn State and others. This slide design can be very effective, especially if you are describing technical information to a non-technical audience. Even if the purpose of the graphic is spelled out on the slide, describe it and include concrete examples of the main point. As one executive said, “The speaker should summarize why I’m looking at all these numbers. They must summarize using one main point.” In this section slides of the following types will be shown. 5.4.2 Slides including Graphs and other Graphics Slide with diagrams Mechanical Engineering Slide with equations Environmental Engineering Slide with line graph Industrial Engineering Slide with map Industrial Engineering Slide with pictures Mechanical Engineering Slide with two graphics Industrial Engineering Diagrams. A drawing that shows the arrangement and relations (of parts, for example) is a diagram. The purposes of diagrams vary. They are used frequently in many types of engineering. Figure 5.19 displays the parts of the final design of a W-axis assembly. This was created by Me- chanical Engineering students. 61 Figure 5.19: Slide with Diagram from Mechanical Engineering. Equations. Engineering and science students and professionals use equations. If the vari- ables are not familiar to your audience, describe each one on your slide. An example is shown below in Figure 5.20, from Environmental Engineering. Note that the variable definitions are easy to read.

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  eBook - PDF

  A Guide to Writing as an Engineer

  • David F. Beer, David A. McMurrey(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  9 150 Engineering Your Speaking Engineers are often called on to speak formally, and many engineers find they have to speak a lot. Whether you give an impromptu 5-minute briefing or a professional 1-hour presentation at a technical seminar (or something in between), you should see your talk as a great opportunity to share information and to show that you know how to communicate. Few of us are naturally gifted with such capabilities, and some of us are almost petrified at the thought of talking before a group, but the skills possessed by good speakers can be learned. The principles discussed in this chapter will enable you to become a confident speaker people will listen to, because you transfer information efficiently and effectively—that is, with a minimum of noise. Preparing the Presentation Developing a worthwhile presentation is like developing a product: Research and planning are crucial in the early stages. We all know what it’s like to have to come up with a spontaneous briefing or unex- pected oral report, but fortunately we usually have some lead time before we talk. Using that time to work through the procedures that follow will help you design a successful presentation. Analyze Your Audience Much of what was said at the beginning of Chapter 3 about focusing on your reader and purpose before writing should also be applied to preparing for an oral presentation. We’ve all been bored by talks that were over our heads, too simplistic, or unrelated to our interests. Don Christiansen, a former editor and publisher of IEEE Spectrum, humor- ously recounts one of his early experiences: As a young engineer, I was invited to address an IEEE Section meeting. My subject was an unusual stereophonic/quadraphonic audio system developed at CBS Laboratories. This Technical Presentation may have been my first before a large engineering audience.

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