Part One: Rethinking Presentations

How often have you had to endure presentations with speakers and slides that taxed your attention?

If you can’t pay attention to the presentation, you can’t retain the information. What would have made those presentations—and what can make your presentations—memorable, influential and successful?

Rethinking Presentations will show you how to use structure, visuals, and stories to make memorable presentations. You will rethink how you have been developing slides and walk away with a step-by-step plan for creating impactful presentations. With your new skills, you will use outlines and storyboards to ensure your slides are not filled with mind-numbing text. Come to this session and leave with the expertise to plan your next presentation, and never fall into the same pitfalls ever again.

You will:

• Discover how to cater to your audience’s working memory using schemas and chunking

• Learn how cognitive overload is rampant in presentations and how to prevent it

• Find out about the dual coding theory and the multimedia effect and how to use that to your advantage

• Hear why stories are so influential and persuasive and how you can use science to ensure your story is heard

• Learn how to implement effective visuals that will be more memorable for audience members

This is the first workshop in this two-part series on developing and delivering presentations that leave an impact on your audience. Through the workshop-style sessions, we’ll cultivate the skills needed to develop memorable content, craft attractive slides, and hit a home run on presentation day.

Part Two: Redesigning Presentations builds on the materials that we cover here. The two workshops are great to attend together, but it is certainly not required. Attend just Part One, just Part Two, or both if your schedule allows!

We will be using Zoom, which allows us to have breakout rooms. You will receive the Zoom link after you sign up for this course. If you have never used Zoom before, you can download it here: https://zoom.us/support/download

About Our Expert

Danielle Hennis is a Presentation Specialist and Graphic Designer at Make It Memorable, where she uses her background in graphic design and psychology to create award-winning slides. She has worked with a wide range of clients, including North Carolina State University, RTI International, and WebMD, to take their ideas and turn them into visual stories by designing memorable and influential slides that help the audience gain a deeper understanding of the topic.

She has worked with first-time presenters who are giving a TED talk as well as researchers who present repeatedly at conferences. She draws from peer-reviewed research and has created a proven facilitation strategy for group presentations. She combines the power of psychology with the beauty of graphic design to work with individuals and groups to visualize data in a way that connects with your audiences, results in actions, and sticks to your long-term memory.