Giving stylish presentations in digital era

Rhenald Kasali, Contributor, Jakarta

In 1998, as soon as I returned to Indonesia after spending six years studying in the United States, I was assigned to teach in the Master's Program for Management at the University of Indonesia.

At the time, none of the lecturers used a projector and most of them were content with transparent sheets. A technically more advanced colleague used color transparent sheets to make his lectures more interesting and to lend a smarter style to himself.

As a lecturer in this program, I obtained teaching materials from Prentice Hall, a textbook publisher, in the form of color transparent sheets. The use of these transparent sheets could make a distinction between "branded" and updated lectures and those that belonged to the category of "fungible commodity".

Unfortunately, I found this device quite troublesome as I would need an assistant and a secretary to arrange my files after I used the sheets for my teaching. Otherwise, I would have to do this job myself. Generally, however, seminar participants or my students would not leave the seminar or the lecture hall right away. They would usually stay a little longer to spend some time with me or to ask me questions.

Obviously, arranging the sheets in their original order in a file would mean wasting some 20 minutes. Then I also would have to arrange different files from different presentations. Clearly, this mounting job gave me a real headache. Although in a way these sheets facilitated my teaching and presentation, they also caused a new series of inconveniences.

Things changed for the better soon enough, though. It struck me one day that my professor at the University of Illinois used a device called an LCD. It was then just a piece of bluish glass. This glass piece was connected to a computer and was placed on an overhead projector (OHP). However, when I tried to use this here the picture was sometimes not clear enough. After some time, I decided it was not much of a help and stopped using this LCD.

In early 1999, a sponsor invited me to give a presentation at a seminar to be held in 10 cities. This sponsor was a big firm and was very much committed to this program. They advertised on a massive scale, which cost no small amount, to draw the attention of participants. They expected my presentation to be not only informative but also entertaining, so that the participants would be glued to their seats until the end of the program.

It was then quite hard to find an excellent device for presentations. Luckily, a colleague from Datascrip -- a company specializing in the distribution and sale of office equipment -- was able to lend me one. It was heavy and bulky enough, the size of a suitcase. I tested it out during a few lectures. When I felt accustomed to it, I tried it at a seminar and found it quite helpful.

I proposed to the sponsor that this device be used at the seminar planned for 10 cities. My proposal flustered the sponsor and the organizing committee as this device (Infocus projector) was generally unknown.

There was still a handicap, though. In those days, laptop computers still did not come with a disk player. Besides, the memory was still limited. To rerun particular material, for example, hotel staff had to do it manually. Obviously, this was really troublesome as the presentation could not proceed very smoothly.

After using this device in two or three places, we found another constraint. The screen onto which the light from the projector was limited. As the size was small, what was on the screen could not be clearly seen from a distance. To cope with this hurdle, we sewed ourselves a broad screen, which we fixed onto two small-sized PVC pipes, each at the top and at the bottom of the screen. So, before the seminar began, a team member had to take the cloth screen to a laundry to be pressed. It was really funny but this actually happened in those days.

During those less sophisticated days, technologically speaking, that is, what was important for me was how to get a more functional projector to replace the modest role of an OHP. Although it was heavy and bulky, I did not mind having to pay for its rental. The result -- a more impressive presentation -- was worth the money.

It is a different era now: the digital era. Presentations are much easier and much more efficient than they used to be and, of course, in some ways are more entertaining. Most hotels own an infocus. Their screens are sufficiently large. The audio quality is quite good. Laptop computers now come with various features and audio cables can be connected directly to them. The days of arranging and rearranging my files are long gone.

In the present digital era, with the help of digital technology, not only are you provided with an array of facilities and conveniences, but you can also very easily turn yourself into a presentation star. It is quite easy for you to make yourself a branded presenter. This device can create an experiential atmosphere during your presentation as it can mesmerize the audience with, among other things, photographs, moving images or even a motion picture, and all with a very high audio quality.

Certainly technology has advanced at the pace of business in the way we view these Powerpoint presentations. These days, projectors have become smaller, lighter, sleeker and able to produce a better quality pictures on large screens, and that means more people at a time can have a good view.

What you have to bear in mind now is that you can no longer plan and design your presentation alone. You need a team that will help you and "prevent" you from becoming absorbed in operating highly sophisticated digital devices with numerous features.

Basically, you must remember that these devices are not everything. They are simply auxiliaries. Eventually, the main content of your presentation, with useful messages for the audience, matters most.

-- The writer is director of the Postgraduate Program at the University of Indonesia's School of Economics