Final Presentation

I decided to table the blog entry I was working about liars.

Last night I had the opportunity to sit in on a presentation that some students did. This presentation was sort of the final test for them to receive their degree. It was somewhat reminiscent of a review board one may encounter in any industry.

I'd  like to offer some observations, but I won't get into any detail, because I'd rather not identify the individuals in the group - I'm not trying to criticize here.

That being said, it seems that the major challenges this group faced were challenges common to any project that requires a presentation. Specifically, I saw three major flaws with the presentation itself, and one major flaw on the material presented.

The first flaw was something inherent to public speaking, and is a difficult skill to develop if it's not something that comes to you naturally. A good deal of this group stuttered, stammered, and just plain froze-up. It happens to the best of us. However, this project was to simulate a company getting a contract. If I'm considering hiring a company to do a job, and the people sent to my office to present all seem scared and grasping for replies to my questions... yeah, they're not getting my contract.

REHEARSE! 
Rehearsing your presentation is an absolute necessity. I'm not saying that this group didn't rehearse, but they definitely stood to benefit from MORE rehearsing.

The second flaw was with their documentation. The cadre on the review board, as well as some of the spectators, brought up a couple of good points on this. One slide dealt with a particular technology. The next slide dealt with a wholly different technology, but because not the title, nor the bullet items, but the subtitle from the previous slide was erroneously carried over to the next slide, this group misrepresented two of the products involved in their service. It was clarified, but no doubt, points were taken off. It was a minor error, but the next error was not so minor. One of the other people sitting on the review board noticed a discrepancy on the cost-breakdown, one that would cost the client around $7,000. To a choosy CEO, that's possibly enough to Kibosh the entire show.

Make sure your documentation is 100% accurate!
Seems like kind of a no-brainier, and perhaps an insurmountable task, but it could be the difference between winning or losing a contract. Lose the contract, lose money. No money, no food. No food, you dead! The financial error really surprised me. The group used Microsoft Excel to make this part of their presentation. Why then, I wonder, did they not utilize the calculation features of Excel? The error occurred when certain items were removed from the list, and the total costs were updated erroneously, or not at all. When used correctly, Excel takes care of all of that for you!

Finally, there were questions asked of the group, and no answers were given, other than "Oh, I'd have to look into that and get back to you." After about the third or fourth one of these, one of the cadre replied "Yeah, I'll be expecting that answer next quarter." which is funny, because those students were supposed to be graduating this quarter.

Be an EXPERT!
There were five people in this group. While no one person could be an expert on everything in it, there should have, given the information presented, and keeping with common current affairs in their particular discipline, been zero questions that went unanswered. Again, this may seem harsh, or even impossible, but allow me to explain.

Remember that fourth error I mentioned? The one dealing with the presentation itself? Well, it had to do with security. Since network security (and compliance with HIPPA) is a huge facet of building a network from the ground up, at least one person in that group needed to become an "expert".  I'm using the word expert loosely, here. At least one person should have been able to explain what their honeypot actually does, or how they plan on defending against a DDoS, a very very common form of cyber attack. And finally, some one should have been able to defend their choice of using, of all things, WEP, to secure their WiFi.

It was clear to me that not one person in the group was an expert on security (or even knowledgeable). I'm not saying that everyone should be as focused on, *ahem* hacking, as I am, but if I'm told to present a topic on something, I had damn well better figure it out. If anyone of these people had Googles 'WEP', they would have made a better choice.

Again, I'm not trying to criticize, I'm simply stating that there were things that should have been done better - things that are not specific to anyone presentation, and are, in fact, common to all presentations.

Rehearse | Become knowledgeable (or expert) in what's being presented | Eliminate typos!


On the flip-side, the groups information that was correctly presented was pretty spot on! I'm sure that they had passed their review, and will be cleared to get those lovely pieces of paper that say "Gradamatated!" on it.

Again, while this was an IT presentation, these faux pas are common to any type of presentation. Regardless of what you're presenting, make sure not to make those basic mistakes!