Presenter Guidelines

Congratulations we've accepted your proposal! You are one of 50 or so chosen from 150, and you've got 45 minutes to speak your piece!

Now what?

We've put together some guidelines for presenters, to help make the sessions successful for you as well as for your audience.

Who are your users?

Your peers, people who are interested in the same problems you are, anyone who will respond to your title and description. So far so good; you've filled the room. How do you keep them?

Why are they there?

Most of them are there for a few reasons: they want to take away something practical for work; they want to explore a new topic; they want to deepen their knowledge of something they're already familiar with. Think about why you go to a conference session, and work from there.

What do they hope to take away?

How will they use what they've learned in your session? What is the story they will tell at the coffee break? Provide handouts, or follow up with a posting of your notes or presentation, something beyond your powerpoint that will be loaded to the IA Summit website after the conference: include your speaking notes, or illustrative diagrams, or something similar that will increase understanding of the topic.

Think about different learning styles

Engage your listeners in different ways—visually, audio, participation or demonstration.

Be specific, and share details

Details are important. If there's no time for the details, then your topic is too broad. Narrow it to a subset of the whole, and dive deeply. Give real examples, even if they didn't work out in the end—you can always talk about lessons learned, and perhaps learn something from new sets of eyes on the problem.

Cut to the chase

Assess the audience's knowledge of your topic by asking for a show of hands. This sets your expectation and theirs as to the level of detail of your presentation. You can review past summit presentations or popular IA outlets to see the general level of understanding of your topic.

Come with an opinion

You obviously care about your topic enough to write it up and present it to us. Show us that you care. Be passionate.

But also be relaxed.

Think of your role as host. If you're comfortable, we're comfortable. Have that drink of water, and don't forget to breathe. Make it easy for people to participate. Stick around afterwards, and extend the conversation. Follow up with notes or diagrams to stimulate discussion. Often you can use the group's combined knowledge to extend everyone's expertise.

Be prepared

Rehearsing your presentation a few times can increase your comfort level (see above). For a truly horrific experience, you can videotape a trial run; watching it is extremely painful but also very valuable. Practicing also gives you a sense of timing for your presentation, so you can leave time for follow-on discussion.

Allow time at the end for questions

Leave five minutes or so at the end to answer questions from the audience.

Hopefully these will be helpful to you. Two other great lists of conference tips are:

• Leisa Reichelt's blog: if it was *my* conference... (or, what makes a good presentation)
• Scott Berkun's blog: How to run a great unconference session

Congratulations, and we look forward to hearing your piece in March!