Yesterday I did a presentation that was supposed to be 20 minutes but was more like 30. It’s hard to judge yourself but it seemed to go Ok. There was no snoring and I’ve had plenty of positive comments but there is one thing nobody knew.
Later that day I recorded the same presentation with Camtasia. I tried doing the whole thing in one take – working the PowerPoint, applications linked to the demo and talking – as if presenting to an audience and it was terrible! I kept stumbling, usually by clicking the wrong buttons, and eventually gave up. You could edit the mistakes out of the final production but I tried another approach.
I ran through the complete presentation recording the video, working the PowerPoint & other applications, but just thinking about what I would say. The resulting presentation was operator error free and about 14 minutes….
I then played back the recorded video adding narration just leaving silence when I’d said enough about the material on screen. The result, after editing out the “no more to add” sections, was about 12 minutes which made me wonder; what was I doing for the rest of the time!
Some of it was due to questions etc but not 50%! Camtasia is a great way to record presentations but it’s also a great way to refine your technique by presenting to yourself then watching the results!
