How to present technical ideas in your presentation to a nontechnical audience

 

And and this is the this is really one of the primary themes, right? If you're, if you're doing a tactical talk with a non technical audience. I think about it, so I also do pitch coaching. 

And in the pitch world, we'd call it takeaways, right? But but there's no reason not to. I mean, one of the things I do right is I bring business language into the academic world academics are like takeaways that sounds like a business pitch. I'm like, guess what? Your presentations a pitch. You may not think about it that way, but you should. Um, and what are the takeaways can only have two or three takeaways because people can't remember very many things.

People can remember a story, which is why stories are so important. People can remember two or three takeaways. 

But but not more than that. So you need to figure out what they are so so last year we're in this Three Minute Thesis space for muscle stay there. Last year, the person who won the three minute thesis competition was doing spinal simulation spinal Surgery simulation. 

He introduced the talk with something we're familiar with. What kind of simulators Are we familiar with? If I say simulator, what comes to mind? Flight Simulator? Flight Simulator? Exactly. That's where he started. Imagine you're on an aeroplane. And there were no flight simulators. And you knew that your pilot had never flown in a storm and you see lightning. 

He says, Hey, this is cool. I've never been in a storm before. At which point you're sweating and wish you weren't on the plane, right? And then he says, well, spinal surgery, guess what? If it's your spinal surgeons for surgery, it's there's no simulator. He's done it on a cadaver. But dead tissue doesn't feel like live tissue. And the problem is something called haptic feedback. 

What is haptic feedback and how can you make them understand?

So haptic feedback, a flight simulator, right? There's a yoke and you pull it back and forth. We all know that. And and as it resists pulling, that's haptic feedback. So you pull it resist, it's not pulling air, it's pulling. And that's the haptic feedback is that back and forth from a spinal surgery is it's very, very small. And the difference between tissue and nerve and bone and blood vessel and is my new. So it's very, very difficult to do spinal surgery simulation. 

Because the, the technology has to be much more precise. But guess what, I figured out how to do it. So so the only word there that you didn't know was haptic. And I taught you what haptic means. And now you can remember, spinal surgery, haptic feedbacks, the problem, it's minute, little movements. And he's figured it out. And then the end of the talk, he actually spins back and says something like, so I want to bring this to market. So you are someone you love goes to spine surgery, you'll know that that person is as well trained as an aeroplane pilot.

 Hmm. Like, of course, we want them to be well trained. We're talking about emotion. How do you make people feel? Yes. The audience like wants to jump up and start clapping. Hallelujah. Right? Like, yes, of course they should be. Right. So So what are we what do we end that? Yes, of course we want them to be is it gives us the, the the energy, the desire, the need to share this with other people. Guess what, your spinal surgeon doesn't do simulators. And we should be doing them. And that's what you want, right? You want your audience to become you you want in this particular case, you want your audience to become supporters of of the work and the massive so so that that little story there, um, wraps up a lot of things that it's simple. The takeaways, right?

 There's a story, there's an emotional connection. And, and those are, those are the pieces we're trying to play with.

When we when we try and present technical information to a non technical audience. So it's not just about definitions, and explanation. The worst thing you can do is sound like a Wikipedia article. And most people start with a Wikipedia article worth of information, which is fine. That's the That's what the whiteboards for. You put the you put that information on the whiteboard, then you figure out what you want people to remember. And then you figure out how to tell it in a way that people are going to become curious and motivated to listen. And, and then you try and finish in a way that people are going to be motivated to do whatever you're hoping they'll do after.

And Andrew I notice at least three important parts or elements to that that presentation. From that person they started with. They started with something we know or at least are familiar with the flight simulator and they related that to the spinal surgery so they beta connection because that they just started in with spinal surgeon wiggle Ha, we don't know, we don't know anything about that. But they made that connection. So they started where we know that made a connection made us curious, introduced only one technical word, which, which then was explained, which now goes in our memory. And we might feel good, I learned a new word today, haptic and even know what it means I can use it in the sentence. It's like, you know, when when you're stirring the soup, and you feel that resistance, that's haptic feedback, you know, the right thickness of your stew.

 

That's a great analogy is perfect. See, it worked. And that message was received, because now George can explain haptic feedback.

Listen to this conversation with Andrew Churchill  https://yourintendedmessage.podbean.com/e/how-to-give-a-technical-presentation-to-non-techies-andrew-churchill/

 

How to deliver a technical presentation to a non-technical audience.