10 minutes of content in 2 minutes

I didn’t spend too long on Cadence before switching to another project. But I have one short and very memorable moment from the Epic User Group Meeting in 1995 while still on the Cadence team. Cadence GUI was to be demonstrated for the first time in front of all attendees. We were sitting in a very large room at the Alliant Energy Center complex as the attendance had outgrown the Concourse Hotel space (bigger, but not better).

Three of us sat in the left front row waiting for the main session to start. (It was an awful place to sit so we weren’t taking up seats that were desirable by customers). We were mostly just joking around with a bit of tense energy.

Carl was “headlining” though and had to do a presentation before we did our debut demo-dance. He sat down next to us, visibly nervous. He was normally composed, so it seemed out of character from my experiences with him. I don’t remember the exact words, but this captures the moment:

I have about 10 minutes worth of content. I’ve practiced and I’m going to do it in about 2 minutes. —Carl

We laughed thinking he was joking, but he assured us, he was not. As ever helpful coworkers, we provided no great advice to calm his nerves, as we had none. It was too late anyway.

Bless his heart. He got up in front of the audience and slowed down and went over his prediction by no more than a minute or so. It was RAPID FIRE INFORMATION. It was awesome and hilarious: it was impossible to keep up. 🤯

It took me more than a few years to be far less nervous doing my own presentations.

It’s funny that he gave me advice after a sales presentation … “you know this stuff inside and out. Just talk about it.” And I realized, I did! I didn’t need to write everything down. I knew what I wanted to talk about. If I left something out, I was the only one that knew really. If I ad-libbed a bit of content, again, I was the only one that knew.

While “knowing the material” isn’t enough to get rid of presentation nerves for a lot of people, that little piece of advice helped me a lot. I started to remove a ton of words from my slides after that. If the words were there for me as anything more than a direction/general topic, then I’d delete them. The words and images/diagrams were there for everyone else. Not me. That was a shift for my approach, but it worked so well.

If I didn’t know the material, then I learned it. It shouldn’t be a surprise how much better a presentation can be when the speaker is confident in the material. It doesn’t make them a great speaker, but it certainly helps establish credibility which is far too often lacking in technical presentations.

Additionally, I would think about what questions I’d ask if I were listening to the presentation and prep for those specifically (and modify content accordingly). If someone caught me off-guard with a question that I’d not considered, I’d write it down and not let it bother me that I’d missed something.

”I don’t know, but I’ll find out” is much better than trying to sidestep and faking it.

The Cadence GUI Demo

It went fine as demos go. I recall we had a glitch, but recovered (and we made it clear it was a work-in-progress). Was there thunderous applause after the demo and a standing ovation? Abso-gui-lutely! OK, not so much. A polite applause. (“Clap clap, when is lunch?“) Since it wasn’t a new product, the interest was mostly about new workflows and improvements to scheduling efficiencies that would result.

Presentations

What’s helped you doing presentations? Or what still bothers you about doing a presentation in an unfamiliar setting? I’ve heard so so so many people over the years say: “I hate doing presentations.” Are you one of them? If you need help with your corporate review or “big pitch” presentation, please consider my 1 or 6 hour consulting services.