Author Topic: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)  (Read 2136 times)

MayDay

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Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« on: November 13, 2018, 02:24:12 PM »
I'm participating in a work course. A group of 18 of us did an 8 week personal development course. The finale is to present our takeaways to our managers.

The rules are no power point slides (or flip charts prepared ahead, or overhead projector, etc) and we need to present our key takeaways, which are not technical- it's leadership/career development stuff.

It can be anything- doesn't have to be serious. A past group did a family feud game, for example. In fact fun is probably better than serious.

The part that is tripping me up is the number of people. I can think of lots of ideas that would work for 5 people. But giving 18 people all a chance to talk is harder. We have over an hour so it can be fairly involved. We only have 2-3 hours to prep as a group.

For reference we are a bunch of engineers. So yes, for many of us this is our worst nightmare.

Anyone have brilliant ideas?

SillyPutty

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2018, 02:34:14 PM »
This isn't terribly creative, since I'm totally ripping off the Family Feud idea—but how about Jeopardy? You could each take turns reading the clues—aka your key takeaways—and then either members of the group could buzz in to answer them, or you make your managers play. That's assuming your managers aren't total dubs and could actually answer the questions... wouldn't want to embarrass them!

thd7t

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #2 on: November 13, 2018, 02:54:12 PM »
I don't know your field, but it could be neat to get a large whiteboard and give various presenters different colors to diagram the information.  The trick would be to design the final presentation in advance and then create a scheme that develops the diagram.  It would be tricky, but doable with 2-3 hours of prep.

You would need the board to be super busy when you finish.

Miss Piggy

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #3 on: November 13, 2018, 03:15:03 PM »
The part that is tripping me up is the number of people. I can think of lots of ideas that would work for 5 people. But giving 18 people all a chance to talk is harder. We have over an hour so it can be fairly involved. We only have 2-3 hours to prep as a group.

For reference we are a bunch of engineers. So yes, for many of us this is our worst nightmare.

Anyone have brilliant ideas?

Whatever you would think of for 5 people can be done in smaller subgroups of the 18 people. Break the group up into groups/teams of 3-4 people and give them a question to discuss as a small group, then ask them to report the key points from their discussion to the larger group.

Do something with sticky notes. For example, hand everyone a 3x5 sticky note pad (or a handful of sticky notes instead of the whole pad) AND a medium-tip black marker. Pose a question and have people write ONE IDEA per sticky note, using the black marker (because you can't see ball-point pen from more than a couple of feet away). Post the sticky notes on the wall, or better yet, have each person (or a rep from each group) post their own sticky notes on the wall, announcing/sharing their answers/ideas as they post. People get jazzed about sticky notes, and they make it look like the group accomplished something. If appropriate, once all of the sticky notes are on the wall, group them into categories that make sense.

Miss Piggy

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2018, 03:23:52 PM »
What about some short skits? Break your 18 people into groups; each group does a skit to demonstrate 1 or 2 key learnings. Maybe they could demonstrate the opposite of the key takeaway(s), or the "what not to do" pieces, then explain the best practices (or show them via a second short skit of what should have been done).

hope2retire

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #5 on: November 14, 2018, 11:28:37 AM »
break it into groups of 3 or 6 and do a "what would you do" scenario of the key opposite of takeaways, where the rest have to come up with the right thing (which is the take away).

MayDay

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #6 on: November 14, 2018, 08:07:44 PM »
Thanks for the ideas, guys. We were told today that breaking into groups is fine.

Presentation is tomorrow afternoon, we get to prep in the morning.

I'll report back!

MayDay

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #7 on: November 15, 2018, 04:02:00 PM »
Update:

One contingent wanted to do basically a PPT with no slides, just present the basic info. I led a group that rebelled. We ended up self sorting into 3 groups of 6 people each, that each covered a different section of the course. 1 boring group, one group did a podcast and interviewed the audience (that worked great) and my group did a Jimmy Fallon thank you notes skit. We were planning to do jeopardy but someone had the thank you cards idea and it worked perfectly!

All in all, I'm very glad it's over but it wasn't as stressful as I thought it would be.

G-dog

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #8 on: November 15, 2018, 04:44:02 PM »
Aw - too late for my suggestions of:

Mime
Interpretive dance
Puppets

In a previous job we did a “roast” of people, one year we did “deep thoughts” by jack handy-style blurbs (SNL skit)

Miss Piggy

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #9 on: November 15, 2018, 06:30:57 PM »
ooh...I love the Jimmy Fallon idea!

Dr.Jeckyl

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #10 on: November 16, 2018, 11:46:48 AM »
Darn it I was too late for this one. I was a corporate trainer for four years and had to do things like this frequently. One biggie is don't forget to do an icebreaker. It eases people in and makes them more comfortable with anything else that you throw at them.

G-dog

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #11 on: November 16, 2018, 12:05:23 PM »
Darn it I was too late for this one. I was a corporate trainer for four years and had to do things like this frequently. One biggie is don't forget to do an icebreaker. It eases people in and makes them more comfortable with anything else that you throw at them.

Depending on what you mean by ice breakers - I hated those. I don’t think it necessarily eases people, etc. But there are probably good ways and not good ways to do these.  But giving a report out to higher ups is not an occasion where I would expect an ice breaker.  YMMV

Dr.Jeckyl

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #12 on: November 16, 2018, 12:17:38 PM »

[/quote]
Depending on what you mean by ice breakers - I hated those. I don’t think it necessarily eases people, etc. But there are probably good ways and not good ways to do these.  But giving a report out to higher ups is not an occasion where I would expect an ice breaker.  YMMV
[/quote]

I can agree that some are cringeworthy. I actually had a higher up ask about political affiliations and gun ownership as part of an icebreaker!! I also hate "tell me about yourself" or "tell me something no one knows about you". The reason it's something you don't know is because it's something I don't want you to know ;). The key is to know the audience and know what will make someone comfortable and what will make people groan. I rate the quality of the presenter on the quality of their icebreaker. It always shows preparedness.

G-dog

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Re: Any creative ideas for a work presentation (no PPT)
« Reply #13 on: November 16, 2018, 03:31:58 PM »

Depending on what you mean by ice breakers - I hated those. I don’t think it necessarily eases people, etc. But there are probably good ways and not good ways to do these.  But giving a report out to higher ups is not an occasion where I would expect an ice breaker.  YMMV
[/quote]

I can agree that some are cringeworthy. I actually had a higher up ask about political affiliations and gun ownership as part of an icebreaker!! I also hate "tell me about yourself" or "tell me something no one knows about you". The reason it's something you don't know is because it's something I don't want you to know ;). The key is to know the audience and know what will make someone comfortable and what will make people groan. I rate the quality of the presenter on the quality of their icebreaker. It always shows preparedness.
[/quote]

I agree with all of this. Damn you are smart. Icebreakers is just another thing my ex-employer didn’t do well.  At one icebreaker we did the “tell us something no one knows about you”, but written on paper and turned in anonymously.  They were then read and we had to guess who it referred to, we were all in the same group, but at two different locations. It was actually hilarious. Even funnier was one of my counterparts idea of turning in an extra slip with something like “I had an affair with a co-worker’s spouse”.  I love an ingenious devil 😈.  He was also the person no one would suspect of doing this, bonus.