The Southern California chapter

of the Association of Proposal

Management Professionals

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Our first meeting of 2012: Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides

Thursday, February 16, 2012

6 p.m.

Webcast meeting with venues in San Diego, Redondo Beach, Woodland Hills, and Redlands

We still need a volunteer to host an Orange County venue.

The meeting is free to members and guests, but RSVPs are required because of security requirements at some venues. RSVP to Mitch Boretz, mitch@engr.ucr.edu, and he will send you directions to the venue you select.

It is our pleasure to present Professor Michael Alley of Pennsylvania State University, an expert in the design of oral presentation materials. In many proposal talks, presentation slides affect the success much more than speakers realize. In fact, the way that slides are designed can greatly affect how much the audience comprehends and remembers. More important perhaps, the way that the presenter designs slides can also affect how focused that presentation is and how well key details are emphasized. In most presentations, the presentation slides follow the topic-subtopic structure of PowerPoint — in other words, a topic phrase headline supported by a bullet list or by a bullet list and a graphic. In recent years, this structure has received much criticism. That criticism is not surprising because the topic-subtopic structure runs counter to what we know about how people learn when listening to a speaker and viewing a visual aid such as a slide.

Professor Alley will explain a completely different structure — the assertion−evidence structure — which is both more effective at helping the audience understand and remember the content and more effective at helping the speaker persuade the audience. In the assertion−evidence structure, the headline is a succinct sentence that establishes the main assertion of the slide. Then rather than supporting that assertion with a bullet list, the presenter chooses visual evidence: photographs, drawings, diagrams graphs, or words arranged visually.

The assertion-evidence structure has achieved much success in helping professionals communicate their work. In fact, the structure’s web-site (http://www.writing.engr.psu.edu/slides.html) has become the first Google listing for the search term presentation slides. The main challenge in adopting the assertion-evidence structure is that designing slides with this structure requires significantly more effort. Much of that effort comes from overcoming the defaults of typical presentation slide programs such as PowerPoint. In addition, significantly more effort is needed to craft the sentence-assertion headlines and to develop the visual evidence.

Holding a master of science in electrical engineering and a master of fine arts in writing, Michael Alley is an associate professor of engineering communication at Penn State.  He is the author three textbooks, including The Craft of Scientific Presentations (Springer, 2003), which has been translated to Japanese. Over the past twenty years, he has taught technical presentations to engineers and scientists across the United States and in Europe, Asia, and South America. Sites include Penn State, MIT, Harvard Medical School, the University of Illinois, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, United Technologies, the Army Corps of Engineers, Simula Research Laboratory (Norway), the Institute for Energy Technology (Norway), Shanghi Jiao Tong University, Seoul National University, the University of Barcelona, the University of Oslo, and the University of Seville. Alley’s web-site on slide design is the first Google listing for the topic of presentation slides.

What's Happening at APMP-SOCAL  

The Southern California chapter normally meets on the third Thursday evening of even-numbered months, except during June (when the international conference takes place) and October (when we have our regional Training Day).

Regular Thursday night meetings are almost always webcast. We establish venues at several locations around Southern California where members and guests can gather to hear the speaker and see the slides. This eliminates the need to drive long distances, but it still preserves the "feel" of a meeting and provides opportunities for networking. Meetings are almost always free to members and guests. Watch for information on the venues and how to RSVP.

This year, we also plan some regional face-to-face meetings, and possibly a face-to-face meeting in collaboration with other professional organizations.

What are your ideas and suggestions?

Do you have an idea for a meeting -- a topic you would like to present, or a topic you would like to hear about? Please contact us with your ideas.

Last revised 01/22/2012