COE Summit 2019

Speaker Presentation Guidelines

Thank you for agreeing to be a featured speaker at the Center for Operational Excellence's Leading Through Excellence summit. The following insights and guidelines are drawn from our experience in working with speakers for years to bring content to our audience, along with constructive criticism we've received from past attendees.

Our audience

About 50 different companies are represented at our summit, ranging from small manufacturers to multibillion-dollar financial services organizations. Companies sending large groups include Nationwide, NetJets, yogurt fruit-base supplier Agrana Fruit US, Huntington Bank, and American Electric Power Co. Despite their differences, these organizations all have a commitment to process improvement, leadership development and problem solving - and that's why they're here at the event.

Attendees, broadly speaking, are in the manager-, director- and VP-level ranks, with a minority in senior leadership (even C-suite) roles and another small contingent on the front lines with no direct reports. Most attendees work in an operations management capacity.

Your crowd

Breakout session attendance is driven by our industry / attendee mix and their interests, and we demand-planned room assignments based on a survey more than 100 attendees completed in early March. We expect, though cannot guarantee, these breakout session attendance levels depending on your session code:

• A1/B1/C1/D1/E1: 100-125 attendees
• A2/B2/C2/D2/E2: 80-100 attendees
• A3/B3/C3/D3/E3: 60-80 attendees
• A4/B4/C4/D4/E4: 40-60 attendees
• A5/B5/C5/D5/E5: 20-40 attendees
  

Their expectations

You are likely going to be one of as many as five presentations that our attendees will be sitting through in a day. Our attendees will be drinking from a fire hose of information over two or three days, and as such, they're seeking to glean from your presentation how they can become a better problem solver or leader when they go back to the office. When you're assembling your presentation, think about how it can become actionable information in the hands of those in the room with you. One easy way to do this: Close your presentation with a bullet-pointed list of key takeaways.

What they don't want is something different than what you've promised. Please review the title and abstract you submitted (Workshops | Breakouts) and ensure your actual presentation delivers on what they have been reading about for months.

Notes on style

In our breakout sessions, you're invited - encouraged - to get informal, conversational, interactive. Think of your breakout session more as a TED Talk and less as a corporate board presentation. Much of this can be achieved through the visual aids you bring with you, and those can be make-or-break when it comes to connecting with your audience. Some recommendations:

• Formatting / audiovisual basics:
  • The computer in your presentation venue will be a PC, so please use PowerPoint or a web-based program (i.e., Prezi).
  • We prefer that speakers submit decks early to be loaded in the room and delivered from the on-site computer to minimize turnover time and potential A/V issues. If you must use your own computer, please notify Matt Burns immediately at burns.701@osu.edu.
  • Our preferred format for presentations is 16x9 but 4x3 is acceptable, particularly if you're working with a presentation you've delivered in the past.
  • You're welcome to brand your presentation as you like.
• Pictures speak louder: Lean heavily on images in your slide deck, which should function as the visuals to your audio, not the table of contents or - worse - your notes. The best slide decks during a presentation should make little to no sense to someone who didn't attend. If you have a deck that's loaded with bullet points, PDF it and submit it to us as the post-event slide deck - then save your pared-down slides for the actual session.
• Less text is more: Avoid slides with multiple bullet points and type sizes smaller than 30 - if you're working in the 'teens, you're putting absolutely too much information on a slide. Text on slides diverts attention away from your presentation and encourages attendees to skip ahead and drown you out. Slides ideally should contain one or two main points each - if you have several, break them into different slides ... or consider whether you need them all documented in the first place.
• Forget everything you know about slide count: Some best practices on presentation prep have suggested guidelines on slide count (e.g., one slide per minute of presentation). This is bad advice. How you handle the above two bullets is vastly more important than how many slides you have. We'd rather see a great 300-slide deck loaded with images and keywords (this, indeed, was the case with a 2017 keynote that notched a record-high audience score) than a 30-slide deck packed with text.
• Charts / graphs are risky: Regardless of room size, attendees sitting in the back of your session will be unable to properly view and interpret data-rich slides featuring trend lines and variables. If you must include them, "build for the back row:" Enlarge portions of interest on subsequent slides and don't fall into the trap of assuming that enough explanation will outweigh the frustration of squinting.
  

Deadlines

Friday, March 27:

• In-room handouts (if applicable - this does NOT include slides, which we only make available digitally).
• Working draft of presentation (does not need to be complete)

Monday, April 8:

• Final presentation in PowerPoint format
• PDF of slides you are comfortable with allowing attendees to download on demand after presentation