Chapter 11

Your Presentation Revisited

In this chapter, you will do the following:

• Recreate your first activity from Chapter 2—only this time you’ll use an idea map.
• Compare your baseline note-taking attempt to your new idea-mapping skills.
• Review the benefits of mapping a presentation.

In Chapter 2, before learning to idea map, you chose a topic for a 30-minute presentation, created the notes that you would take to the podium, and created them in your usual format. I called these notes your baseline notes. The purpose of this activity was to make you aware of your current note-taking style. We are going to do this activity again, only this time it will be done by using your idea-mapping skills. You will then compare your initial baseline notes with the idea map you will create in this next activity.

Presentation—Second Attempt

One of the struggles in the original activity was choosing a topic that you could talk about for 30 minutes. You can reuse this same topic or choose a new one. If you don’t have a presentation theme in mind, take a moment to create a small idea map of possible topics. Next, decide on one of the topics and take 5 minutes to create the notes you will take to the podium using your new idea-mapping technique. The objectives are speed (pretend you’re under a deadline) and volume of data. Let the thoughts come naturally and randomly. Get them down as quickly as you can. Don’t worry about changing colors or being neat. At the end of the 5 minutes, assign each main branch a number to determine the order and sequence of the presentation.

Now find your baseline notes from Chapter 2. When comparing this map to your original notes, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Did I struggle as much in choosing a topic?

2. Did I have a greater number of topics to choose from?

3. Which document contains a greater amount of information?

4. Which one is more organized?

5. Could I give a presentation from this idea map?

6. Were there any images in the map?

7. Which one looks messier? (Probably the idea map!)

Benefits of Presentation Maps

As you will discover if you use this map to deliver an actual presentation, there are a number of benefits for using the map for delivery purposes. For example:

• It gives you flexibility to adjust the order of or the importance placed on a branch at the last moment. Maybe when you arrive for your meeting you find out that a particular part of your presentation is critical to the audience.
• It gives you the ability to take the same basic topics and adjust it to fit the needs and applications of different audiences.
• It gives you the ability to adjust the time. This is the infamous original “20-minute” presentation that must now be done in 10 minutes because some previous presenter talked for too long!!
• It gives you the ability to read your audience as you present, because you can look at them (rather than your notes!). In addition you eliminate both the visual and the audible distraction of shuffling through multiple pieces of paper.
• It gives you a chance to express yourself more naturally because you are looking at key thoughts. Most people using linear notes sound like they are reading a from script—and they are!

Next time you have an opportunity to speak to a group, use an idea map. See Figure 11.1 for a map of the benefits for using an idea map as opposed to using baseline notes.

Figure 11.1 Chapter 11 Summary

Chapter 12 will provide you with many choices of idea-mapping applications—allowing you to practice your skills!