How to conduct Zoom presentations on quarantined : 10 tips

Grape.ua Creative Solutions Agency, in its article, talks about how to properly conduct presentations during quarantine (given that you cannot meet in person, and most likely they happen in Zoom).

Videoconferencing at Zoom over the past month has firmly entered the agency’s life. Video calls have become the basis of personal communication between the team and clients in projects. At Grape, we continue to intensively show clients marketing solutions for projects, present strategies, ideas, design. And usually such presentations take from 1 to 3 hours.

Last week alone, we made a remote presentation as part of the rebranding project “Dairy Plant No. 1” in Odessa, discussed a new stage in updating the strategy of the Sweet.tv brand, showed campaign ideas for projects by the Kiev developer Enso and others. My observations of the team and clients helped to highlight a few recommendations on how to prepare and conduct an effective presentation in Zoom.

Perhaps they will be useful to you, too, since, according to my forecast, we will continue to work in remote teams until June.

- Prepare an unlimited account. I recommend paying for access to Zoom-conferences without time limits. Although Zoom announced that it would remove the 40-minute barrier for the period of the global pandemic, it’s better to be sure that you will not interrupt the broadcast and spoil the impression with problems.
- Select the person responsible for the presentation. Decide which team will organize the participants, in which channels, and through whom the responsible person will be able to send invitations in advance. We are responsible for technical issues with an IT director and an operational (Scrum-) manager, who help with setting up and delegating rights to project managers and project managers.
- Do runs, rehearsals. Check the content of strategically important projects in advance. So you can see how people perceive information in real time, understand who and how from the team will present, and indicate the necessary improvements in the material and presentation form. In remote mode, you should be especially energetically charged and transmit it to listeners.
- Check availability. Tell participants when and how to click on the link and what people who are not familiar with Zoom should do in advance. Most often, difficulties arise with installing the application and with sound that the administrator can control. A few hours before the conference, check if everything is configured, whether the client will have access to the Internet and the ability to listen to you and watch without interference.
- Define the composition of the participants. Before the start of the presentation, imagine everyone who will participate in the conference with names, positions and roles in the project. Remind this to the participants at the beginning of the presentation as well, in order to more effectively build a dialogue and clarify communication - who to contact and for what comment, who is behind the backgrounds, photos and videos from the apartment.
- Start with an intro. Tell participants the structure of the presentation and how long it will take. If the presentation is several tens of slides or more, add slide numbers and a navigator, so that it will be easier for viewers to make notes and give comments.
- Set rules for comments. Determine how you will work with comments during the presentation process. Be sure to voice it to the participants or show the rules of your presentation on the slide. We try to submit all comments for discussion at the end of each section or the entire presentation so as not to slow down. If we need a comment on a specific object or information - we focus on this and discuss.
- Do not read the text on slides. The peculiarity of the remote format is that people will read the text as soon as you show the slide. Therefore, your task is to convey verbally the key idea, supplement the visual and textual information with a story or conclusion, so that it is logical to proceed to the next slide. I advise you to take notes to the slides in advance so as not to lose the thought in the process. - We also make summary slides with numbers and descriptions of ideas, so that in the final it would be easier to comment / discuss the proposed options.
- Do not write notes in the chat conference. Notes are convenient to use as text questions and comments on the presenter, but they disappear after leaving the conference. And they just do not all see them, especially when a person enters the conference from a smartphone. Make notes in the project Telegram chat telegram, write out by hand and save without loss.
- Summarize the presentation. After the conference, it is important that the person in charge of the presentation