technical presentation books

Technical Presentation Workbook : Winning Strategies for Effective Public Speaking, Third Edition

This fully revised third edition includes an entirely new chapter devoted to online presentations. This Workbook also includes updated material on interactive training and questioning, as well as extensive coverage of electronic presentations.

Packed with tips, ideas, and examples, this book consists of proven step-by-step approaches to planning and delivering effective technical presentations. Includes information on how to: gear presentations to engineering meetings, briefings, conferences, and training sessions; zero in on a presentation's topic and purpose; analyze the audience; arrange the room to boost effectiveness; and know your support media options.

The Workbook's easy-to-follow worksheets, exercises, and checklists present the fundamental skills and advanced techniques that will help make every presentation successful. Best of all, the Workbook format allows the reader to work through each chapter or to jump directly to a specific

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Sullivan, RL, & Wircenski, JL. Technical Presentation Workbook : Winning Strategies for Effective Public Speaking, Third Edition . ASME Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780791859575 No. of Pages: 314 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575 Publisher: ASME Press Published: 2010

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Table of Contents

• Front Matter Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.fm Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 1 Getting Started By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch1 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 2 Know Your Audience By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch2 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 3 Arranging the Facilities By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch3 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 4 Selecting Your Presentation Strategies By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch4 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 5 Preparing Your Presentation Notes By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch5 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 6 Developing and Using Presentation Media By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch6 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 7 Kicking off Your Presentation By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch7 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 8 Delivering Your Presentation By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch8 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 9 Presenting a Technical Demonstration By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch9 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 10 Using Brainstorming, Case Studies, and Role Plays By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch10 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 11 Leading a Discussion By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch11 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 12 Adding Humor to Your Presentation By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch12 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 13 Delivering Team Presentations By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch13 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 14 Delivering International Presentations By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch14 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 15 Delivering Online Presentations By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch15 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• 16 Evaluating Your Presentation By Richard L. Sullivan , Richard L. Sullivan Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jerry L. Wircenski Jerry L. Wircenski Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.ch16 Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF
• Back Matter Doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.859575.bm Abstract View Chapter PDF Link PDF

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Book description

Expert advice for technical professionals looking to improve their presentation skills.

Your technical skills and professional expertise are evidence of your ability to accomplish difficult tasks. Strong presentation skills can help you further advance your career. The ability to present articulately to customers, management, peers and others can significantly enhance your credibility, clout, and professional status. Delivering presentations at work or professional events is an unbeatable way to gain a reputation as a valued employee and an expert in your field.

If you have ever tried to get out of giving a presentation because of nerves, or if you feel there is room for improvement in your presentation techniques, then Presentation Skills for Technical Professionals is for you.

Invaluable tips

This book gives you invaluable tips on how to make your presentation clear and accessible, how to interact with your audience and how to retain their interest while keeping your anxiety under control. Naomi Karten has used her vast experience — both positive and negative — on the front lines of public speaking to provide key advice (and many chuckles!) in this engrossing read for the technical professional.

By following the advice contained this book, you can take the stress out of the exercise and start delivering presentations that will engage your audience and make your ideas and arguments memorable.

Read this book and ...

• Make your presentation easy to absorb. This book shows you how to structure your information and ideas to ensure you communicate your message to your audience.
• Learn the pitfalls to avoid. However much time you have put into preparing the presentation, if you irritate your audience you can ruin all your hard work. This book reminds you of the bad habits, like mumbling or speaking in clichÉs, which you need to avoid if you want to make a good impression.
• Use PowerPoint effectively. Presentations are often let down by slides which are dull or cluttered. Over-reliance on PowerPoint can mean that the slides become the focal point of the presentation, instead of helping to make what you are saying easier to grasp. This book shows you how to make intelligent use of PowerPoint. Presenting text in small chunks and using a readable type size are two simple ways to keep your audience listening.
• Deliver successful presentations to managers and customers. Different audiences require different approaches. This book contains essential advice on how to deliver presentations both to high-ranking executives and to customers. Get to the point, and satisfy your superiors. Speak the customer's own language, and you are more likely to make the sale.

Read the foreword for this book

What others are saying about this book ...

'… It's an easy and entertaining read, and I learned a lot… There is lots more great information about all aspects of presenting in this book. I highly recommend it to everyone who ever has to make a presentation' Lisa Crispin, co-author of "Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

'If you're only going to read the first paragraph of this review, I will share the bottom line. If you get up in front of people, real or virtual, buy Presentation Skills for Technical Professionals: Achieving Excellence. Assuming you read at least one part of the book, you will have the tools to raise your game as a presenter ... Buy it, read it, use it as a reference.' Tom Cagley, Editor at Software Process and Measurement Cast; Review taken from Podcast 117. 'Offers invaluable tips on how to make presentations clear and accessible. From topics such as concisely outlining the aspects of good and bad presentations to effectively interacting with the audience, the advice is practical and geared specifically to a technical professional.' Pam Boiros, Books 24x7

'Presentation Skills for Technical Professionals by Naomi Karten is an expansive guide to honing the skills needed to wow an audience.' Julian Goldsmith, CIO Magazine review - read the full review here

'A Thorough and Dynamic Book No Technical Professional Should Be Without … As a professional speaker and writer myself, I was amazed at the amount of detail, Naomi delivers with as much pizazz as necessary to grip this audience … She has given us all the nuances, answers all our questions, provides exceptions to the rules, all manner of presenting scenarios and situations, and does it in an entertaining way. It's the kind of book you will keep going back to just to feel good about a presentation you have coming up ...' Jack Shaw, Amazon Review

'Great book! It discusses virtually all aspects and levels of the presentation process ... it describes the basics, discusses finding your voice, provides advice on speaker anxiety, and outlines the attributes of good and bad presentations. From a seasoned speaker's perspective like myself, I found a wonderful combination of quick tips, reminders of important presentation fundamentals, a "Presenter Survival Kit checklist" that I now keep with my presentation bag and great insights when presenting to management, customers, foreign audiences, and in other similar scenarios.' Eric P. Bloom, Author of Manager Mechanics

'I just finished your book 'Presentation Skills for Technical Professionals' in course of my self-learning. Just wanted to thank you for the amazing experience and in depth coverage of all topics. The book kept me glued to my seat until I finished it. One of the most pleasurable and practically useful reading experiences in the recent past.' Abhinav Mukherjee, Mphasis

Use this invaluable resource of tried and tested advice to engage your audiences and take the stress out of presenting ... Buy this book today!

Table of contents

• What’s in it for you?
• Naomi as a formerly panicked speaker
• Thus, this book
• “But I’m not a performer”
• Introverts and extraverts as presenters
• If I can do it
• Get started
• Develop the presentation
• Prepare for the presentation
• Give the presentation
• In conclusion
• Dare to aim high
• Be yourself
• Believe in yourself
• Recognize the imposter syndrome
• Understand the 3 Ps of presenting
• An example of a good and bad presentation
• The excellent, the mediocre, and the let-me-out-of-here
• Attributes of the worst presentations
• Attributes of the best presentations
• Learn from role models
• Speak – don’t die!
• Draw comfort from high-level presenters
• Identify your fears
• Understand what really matters to the audience
• Don’t announce your nervousness, minimize it!
• Get started – now!
• Establish your presentation goals
• Identify your audience
• Organize your ideas
• Incorporate supporting material
• Accommodate differences in learning style
• Tailor your material to fit the context
• Edit your presentation
• Create slides (if you’ll be using slides)
• Take a break
• How to deliver a strong opening
• How to deliver a strong closing
• Types of interaction
• Other types of interaction
• Planning your interaction
• How stories make facts interesting
• Why stories work
• How to craft a story
• Where to find stories for your presentations
• Stories as interaction
• Pointers for storytelling
• PowerPoint: a solution – and a problem
• A few simple guidelines for preparing slides
• Supplement your presentations with handouts
• Seek alternatives to slide-driven presentations
• Additional resources
• Dress to unstress
• Review your audio-visual requirements
• Confirm the location and date
• Meet your deadlines
• Be on site well ahead of time
• Be prepared to end on time
• Take care of yourself before your presentation
• Determine what you need to bring with you
• Why practice?
• How to practice
• Build rapport with the audience
• Open with confidence
• Speak in your own natural voice
• Make eye contact – and you contact
• Don’t become dependent on your notes
• Use a microphone
• Present standing
• Avoid the need to read
• Monitor your pace
• Use humor judiciously
• Observe your presentation as you give it
• Physical mannerisms
• Vocal mannerisms
• Speaking too fast
• Excessive apologies
• Treating the audience disrespectfully
• Tentativeness
• Facing audience questions
• Preparing to answer questions
• Responding when you’re unsure of the answer
• Responding when you don’t know the answer
• When is a difficult audience not a difficult audience?
• How to cope with a challenging audience
• Practice deep breathing
• Do qigong exercises
• Eliminate stressors
• Use visual imagery
• Relive feelings of confidence
• Mentally rehearse
• Use positive affirmations
• Create anchors
• Put it all together for the presentation
• Tailor your presentation to their perspective
• Get to the point
• Incorporate an appropriate level of complexity
• Accommodate their communication preferences
• Be cautious about using humor
• Anticipate possible questions and objections
• Consider your customers’ perspective
• Guard against potentially ambiguous terminology
• Show that you understand their business
• Watch your attitude
• Allow ample time for questions
• Be careful how you sell
• Remember that appearances count
• Benefits of presenting to your team
• Presentation anxiety, team-style
• Presentations to on-site teams
• Presentations to geographically dispersed teams
• Language and cultural differences
• Cultural differences that create misunderstanding
• Parlez-vous français?
• When the presenter is a non-native speaker
• Identify conferences where you might present
• Submit a proposal to present
• Be on site early
• Be careful setting up
• Chat with audience members
• Don’t be distracted by people who walk out
• Respond to questions astutely
• Behave professionally at all times
• Thank the conference director
• Webinar positives and negatives
• How to prepare a successful webinar
• How to deliver a successful webinar
• Co-presenting: a team effort
• Prerequisites to co-presenting
• Succeeding with presentation partners
• FINAL THOUGHTS
• Bibliography
• ITG Resources

Product information

• Title: Presentation Skills for Technical Professionals
• Author(s): Naomi Karten
• Release date: September 2010
• Publisher(s): IT Governance Publishing
• ISBN: 9781849281553

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Technical Presentation Workbook, Third Edition

Publisher: ASME

Publish Date: 2010

Language: English - US

ISBN: 9780791859575

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Click here to purchase this eBook on the ASME Digital Library.   Winning Strategies for Effective Public Speaking By Richard L. Sullivan and Jerry L. Wircenski New third edition now available! This fully revised third edition includes an entirely new chapter devoted to online presentations.  This Workbook also includes updated material on interactive training and questioning, as well as extensive coverage of electronic presentations. Packed with tips, ideas, and examples, this book consists of proven step-by-step approaches to planning and delivering effective technical presentations.  Includes information on how to: gear presentations to engineering meetings, briefings, conferences, and training sessions; zero in on a presentation's topic and purpose; analyze the audience; arrange the room to boost effectiveness; and know your support media options. The Workbook's easy-to-follow worksheets, exercises, and checklists present the fundamental skills and advanced techniques that will help make every presentation successful.  Best of all, the Workbook format allows the reader to work through each chapter or to jump directly to a specific skill.

Acknowledgments What This Workbook Will Do for You How to Use the Technical Presentation Workbook Part I — Technical Presentation Skills Chapter 1 Getting Started; What is your presentation topic?; Guidelines for choosing a presentation title; Why are you making this presentation?; Who’s in the audience?; What are the preferred times for scheduling a presentation?; How long should your presentation be?; Where is the presentation site?; How will you deliver your presentation?; Key points to remember. Chapter 2 Know Your Audience Audience profile; Number of participants; Why are individuals attending your presentation?; Key points to remember. Chapter 3 Arranging the Facilities Needs of the participants; Seating arrangements; Needs of the presenter; Your presentation floor plan; Key points to remember. Chapter 4 Selecting Your Presentation Strategies The seven most common presentation strategies; Criteria for selecting presentation strategies; Key points to remember. Chapter 5 Preparing Your Presentation Notes Why you should use notes Guidelines for preparing your notes Add prompts to your outline; Format options for presentation notes; Key points to remember. Chapter 6 Developing and Using Presentation Media Benefits of presentation media Selecting presentation media; Common presentation media; Key points to remember. Chapter 7 Kicking Off Your Presentation Introducing yourself; Participant introductions; What to include in your presentation introduction; Presentation introduction techniques; Key points to remember. Chapter 8 Delivering Your Presentation Tips for reducing anxiety or “stage fright”; Those first critical moments; Effective verbal communication techniques; Effective nonverbal communication techniques; Why ask questions during your presentation?; Effective questioning techniques; How to summarize your presentation; Key points to remember. Part II — Advanced Presentation Skills Chapter 9 Presenting a Technical Demonstration What is a technical demonstration? Planning a technical demonstration Presenting a technical demonstration; Key points to remember. Chapter 10 Using Brainstorming, Case Studies, and Role Plays Why use brainstorming?; Why use case studies?; Case study development form; Why use role plays?; Role play development form; Key points to remember. Chapter 11 Leading a Discussion What is a discussion?; When to use the discussion strategy; Planning for a good discussion; Leading a good discussion; Key points to remember. Chapter 12 Adding Humor to Your Presentations The benefits of humor; Developing your sense of humor; Guidelines for appropriate humor; Tips for adding humor; Key points to remember. Chapter 13 Delivering Team Presentations Planning a team presentation; Working with subject-matter specialists; Planning for conference-type presentations; Key points to remember. Chapter 14 Delivering International Presentations Cultural differences; Understanding your audience; Preparing for your presentation; Delivering your presentation; Key points to remember. Chapter 15 Delivering Online Presentations Online Presentation Technologies; Preparing and Delivering Your Videoconference Presentation; Preparing and Delivering Your Webinar; Key points to remember. Chapter 16 Evaluating Your Presentation Why evaluate your presentation?; Informal evaluation techniques; Formal evaluation techniques; Key points to remember. Index

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Technical Presentations – Book 1: Strategy Preparation and Planning

Engineers and scientists are frequently required to present technical information to a broad spectrum of individuals, including co-workers, executives and potential clients in a variety of formats, such as conference papers, training materials and funding proposals. Even if you do not present conference papers or other formal presentations, you must present your ideas and opinions daily, in a clear and concise manner.  Without a strategy and appropriate preparation, a presentation will be unfocused, not apply, or fail completely.  Book 1 of this four-book series outlines a framework to help you prepare for your next presentation.

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Technical Presentation Workbook: Winning Strategies for Effective Public Speaking

Publisher description.

This fully revised third edition includes an entirely new chapter devoted to online presentations. This Workbook also includes updated material on interactive training and questioning, as well as extensive coverage of electronic presentations. Packed with tips, ideas, and examples, this book consists of proven step-by-step approaches to planning and delivering effective technical presentations. Includes information on how to: gear presentations to engineering meetings, briefings, conferences, and training sessions; zero in on a presentation's topic and purpose; analyze the audience; arrange the room to boost effectiveness; and know your support media options. The Workbook's easy-to-follow worksheets, exercises, and checklists present the fundamental skills and advanced techniques that will help make every presentation successful. Best of all, the Workbook format allows the reader to work through each chapter or to jump directly to a specific skill.

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Chapter 16: Technical Presentations

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One important, but often overlooked, skill in engineering is presenting. From talking with students, I have noticed that a lot of engineering students are intimidated by public speaking. In fact, I have almost a decade of experience lecturing, but I still am a little scared standing in front of a large classroom! It is OK to be a little nervous. I tell students being a little nervous means that you care, and caring is part of successful presentations. This chapter aims to reduce your presentation anxiety by teaching you the skills you need. The main key is to practice, know the format, and be prepared.

Learning Goals

In this chapter we will learn:

• Why it is important to practice and get comfortable presenting technical information.
• What your presentation should entail for the main type of engineering presentations.
• How to present technical information professionally and engagingly.
• What “audience” means and how to use what you know about your audience to your advantage.
• The art of PowerPoint and how to use the features in a non-distracting way.
• What should (and should not) be included in a technical presentation.

Why Learning How to Present Is Important

It is one thing to have a good idea, invent something cool, or develop new technology, but it is a whole other thing to successfully disseminate that information. A lot of people don’t realize that presenting is a skill and like all skills requires practice and study to perfect. It seems like it is easy to slap together a PowerPoint and talk about your project, but if you do not put the time and effort into the presentation to ensure that it impacts your audience, your work will be wasted.

Key Concept: You have to learn how to present in a compelling manner in order to get people to pay attention to your product/idea/report/etc.

For example, I have been an instructor and advisor for several senior design teams. I have seen team projects range from truly impressive to mediocre. I have also seen the impressive teams be dismissed at competitions and the mediocre teams win awards at competitions because of presentation skills alone. What I am trying to convey to you is that presenting can be the “make or break” for a project. No matter how good your project is if you can’t describe to people how good your idea is, no one will care. That being said, the moral of this story is not to do a mediocre project and coast on your presentation skills. Combining a good project with a good presentation should be your goal.

Finally, it should be noted, that engineers have to present a lot . In fact, engineers have to do presentations a lot more than you might think. You might have to present your design idea to your research and development team. You might have to present to the entire company describing how you optimized a system process for efficiency. You might have to present to shareholders the newest technologies your team is working on. You might have to present to future customers on how your technology can improve their productivity. The point is, that engineers are expected to be good presenters and historically, University education in engineering does not explicitly address this skill. Hopefully, this chapter and your subsequent education reverses this.

Presentation Anxiety

Before we jump into some examples and tips, I wanted to take a quick note on presentation anxiety. As I mentioned before, there is no getting around it, you will probably be a little nervous when you present. That is ok! Almost everyone feels a little nervous. However, there are tactics that you can use to reduce your anxiety when stepping up in front of an audience.

One of the biggest keys to reducing your anxiety is preparation . In fact, there is no such thing as “over preparing”. The more you prepare for your presentation the better you will feel because you will be more confident about what you are speaking on.

Here are three tips that should help when it comes to preparation and alleviating anxiety:

Anxiety Reduction Mechanism 1) Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse…

Although it might seem self-explanatory or obvious, rehearsing is the most important step in reducing presentation anxiety. In my experience, this is the step that most students spend the least amount of time on even though it is the most important.

Out of all of the time you budget to create your presentation, the majority of time needs to be spent rehearsing.

The more you rehearse, the smoother your delivery will become and the more confident you will feel. Rehearse in front of your roommates. Rehearse in front of your classmates. Rehearse in front of a mirror. Rehearse to your parents (this is a great idea as it will probably impress them about how far you have come in your education and maybe get a few more bucks thrown on your campus cash card!). Rehearse in front of your grandparents (I am sure grandma would love to hear from you anyway). I think you get the idea. Rehearsing is key and the more that you practice your presentation, the more comfortable you will feel. Rehearsing in front of people that aren’t familiar with the course is even better. It will generate questions and make sure that you are explaining things in an optimal manner.

What I suggest to students is, that they time each of the rehearsals of their presentation. The key is to continue to practice rehearsing and practicing until the group can finish the presentation without making any mistakes and when they can finish within +/- 5 seconds of the same time (if it is a 10-minute limit presentation, the team can finish each practice session in 9:50 seconds to 9:55 seconds every time). As you can imagine, this takes a ton of practice but does reflect the level of polish necessary to feel confident about your presentation.

Anxiety Reduction Mechanism 2) Anticipate questions.

The next key to preparation for your presentation is to anticipate the questions you think the audience will ask, and be prepared with answers to those questions. You can’t anticipate every single question that you may get asked, but you can probably think of a few avenues that your audience members’ minds might wander.

For example, let’s imagine that you are giving a presentation on the efficacy of a vaccine. Depending on your audience, you should be prepared to answer the following questions:

• What is a vaccine?
• Specifically, how do vaccines work?
• Do vaccines cause autism? (Spoiler: NO )
• What types of adverse reactions might there be to the vaccine?
• How long will it take to produce 100 million doses of the vaccine?
• Are there specific storage requirements for this vaccine?

Preparing detailed answers to these questions will strengthen your knowledge of your presentation topic and alleviate your anxiety. Since you anticipated the questions your audience will ask, you don’t have to worry as much about looking like a fool on stage. This is also where rehearsing in front of someone who is not familiar with the course or topic can be very beneficial since it will generate a lot of these types of questions that you may have not considered.

Anxiety Reduction Mechanism 3) No one in the audience cares about you.

Sometimes students interpret this incorrectly. I am not saying that no one cares about you. Lots of people do. Your professor does, you have friends in the class, etc. What I mean by this is that it is important to remember that when you give class presentations, often, your classmates and peers have to give presentations as well.

Think back to the last class you were in where you had to present. Think about sitting in your chair, while another team is presenting, waiting for your turn. Be honest. Were you even listening to them? Or were you anxiously awaiting your turn at the presentation? Well, the reality is, everyone else is only thinking about themselves and their presentation while you are presenting . When you make a tiny mistake, no one notices. The only thing they will notice is if you totally bomb the presentation (which you won’t because you rehearsed so much).

So as part of your preparation, relax . The selfish and narcissistic tendencies of your classmates ensure that they won’t be paying as much attention to you as you think they might. Hopefully, that relieves a little bit of the pressure.

Discussion 16.1: How do you feel about presentation anxiety?

What Your Presentation Should Entail

As an engineer, you will typically be presenting on projects you are proposing or presenting data from projects that you have already completed. All of the advice from this chapter (no such thing as over-preparing, etc) will be helpful in reducing stage anxiety but to make sure that your presentation is well received, you need to make sure that the presentation contains the appropriate material.

You will be expected to have the following sections: title, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. The following example presentation will highlight the most important and standard slides that your presentation should (probably) entail.

To describe each of the required sections (keep in mind that I am showing only one slide for each section but it is likely that you will need multiple slides) I included example slides from a presentation I gave at an American Society for Engineering Education conference in 2019 in which I won the “Best Presentation” award. Note, that the slides shown below are only a subset of the slides that I presented at the conference. For the full slide deck, you can click here.

Title Slide

The title slide is just a place to include the names of all the people that worked on the project and their affiliations. And the title. Duh.

• Keep it simple.

Introduction / Background Slide(s)

The purpose of the introduction slide is to outline your current understanding of the subject. You need to include specific examples of previous work/research.

• Clearly explain the importance of the current project and what the significance of the project will be.
• Justify the merit of your project by presenting significant information.
• End with a specific, clear, and explicit purpose for the project. Some of the projects that you complete during your undergraduate career will be chosen for you. It does not mean that the purpose of the project is “because the professor told me to do it”. Spend some time thinking about the project and what learning outcomes you are expected to gain from it.

Materials and Methods

The purpose of the materials and methods slide is to list the necessary steps for your audience to interpret the results.

• You should include: sample sizes, how the data will be processed, everything that was used in the project, and what statistical tests if any will be used.
• It should be clear how the materials and methods relate to the purpose of the project.
• The audience should feel that presenters fully understand the scope and details of the work (especially if it is a proposal).

The results slide is the place where you describe what you found from your project.

• Present the data from the project. What did you do? What did you find?
• Do not interpret your results yet! Just show what you gathered.
• Visual descriptions of your data are important. Be sure to include figures and tables as appropriate.

Although it might seem like your results are the most important slide, I would argue that it is actually your discussion slide. Whereas in your results section you simply tell your audience what you found, in your discussion section, you need to interpret the results for your audience.

• Interpret the data from the results section.
• Answer the “why” of the data.
• Draw conclusions about the project.
• List any limitations of the project.
• Discuss future work.

Conclusion / Significance

Finally, we get to the conclusion slide. This is another very important slide as it can be an opportunity to reinforce the takeaway message that you want to give your audience.

• Should be a “natural” conclusion. Your presentation should not end abruptly. The audience should feel it coming.
• Summarize the major points from your presentation. Be sure to provide your audience with a take-home message.
• Summarize the weaknesses of the project. It shows that you can critically think about your own work and makes your audience more sympathetic to your position. Admitting what you would change actually strengthens your position.

How To Give a Dynamic Engineering Presentation

There are two main things to worry about when presenting engineering information in a dynamic and interesting way; the content and yourself.

In my opinion, one of the best ways to convey what makes for a dynamic and engaging presentation is to have you look at one of the worst. What follows is one of the worst presentations I could find on the internet. To set the stage for you, it is from a British show in which people pitch their ideas to a group of investors (it is similar to the American show Shark Tank). I chose this particular clip for a few reasons:

It is supposed to be entrepreneurs getting the opportunity of a lifetime to get their dream invested. They should be excited and passionate by default! The following pitch is atrocious but the product is actually kind of an interesting idea. It seems to me that if she had given a more dynamic and engaging pitch, the investors may have been more interested. In fact, one of the investors says as much. With that out of the way, watch the following pitch from Gayle Blanchflower (I couldn’t find out if this spelling was correct). Note: the video should automatically start at 30:12 for you. If it doesn’t you can skip there. Also, be prepared to answer some questions on what you think went wrong with her pitch.

Discussion 16.2: An atrocious presentation

I am truly sorry for putting you through that. However, I hope you agree that it gives you some ideas of what NOT to do when trying to give a dynamic and interesting presentation. Here are some more tips about both the content of your presentations and tips for you.

Know your audience Your audience will dictate what you are presenting. If you are presenting on the efficacy of vaccines to a group of doctors, you can assume that they know what vaccines are and how they work, therefore, you can leave that information out of the presentation. However, if you are giving the same presentation to a group of middle schoolers, it might be a good idea to include that background information. The key is to know your audience and tailor the presentation to their knowledge.

Convey your excitement If you aren’t excited about your project, your audience surely will not be. Get excited and make your presentation exciting the best that you can.

Tell a story This chapter gives you the basic framework (you can think about it like the beginning, middle, climax, end, or a story) but you need to tell it. The more you can make your presentation flow like a story, the better.

Keep it simple (communicate, don’t obfuscate) Every field has jargon and acronyms that make people feel smart for knowing. Don’t lose your audience in the lingo! This is where knowing your audience is critical but in reality, even scientists and engineers appreciate brief definitions of scientific terminologies and processes.

• Set the stage. Clear the podium of distractions. Have whatever tools you need for your presentation ready to go ahead of time.
• Get ready to perform Presentations are performances. Know your subject and know your main talking points. Do not memorize a script! Your rehearsing should have been so extensive you don’t need one anyway.
• Stride up to podium / stage / front of room. Be proud! Don’t sulk.
• Stand tall, keep your chest lifted, and smile. If you aren’t confident by nature, learn to fake it. It goes a long way.
• Pay attention to your teammates when it is their turn to talk. Remember, if you look bored, your audience will interpret that as if they should be bored.
• Speak loudly and project your voice clearly. For some, this is not natural and will take practice. Good thing you rehearsed so much!
• Take your time. A moment or two of silence is a powerful tool.
• Talk to the audience, not the screen.
• Stay on time.
• Rehearse a lot. Remember, there is no such thing as being over-prepared.

PowerPoint Tips

As I stated before for dynamic presentations , I think it is a good idea to look at bad PowerPoint decks to understand what makes the good ones, good. Before moving on, take a look at the slides here: https://www.slideshare.net/Kshivets/...cancer-surgery –4936542. When you have finished looking at those slides, participate in the following discussion prompt before moving on.

Discussion 16.3: A really terrible slide deck

Well after reviewing that horrible slide deck, you should actually probably have a good idea of what makes for a good slide deck. Here are my tips:

• Less is more. Less slides, less text. Trim off the fat and concentrate on the coolest most relevant things.
• Create sections. Title slides to start new sections can help break the presentation into a logical flow. Specifically, you should use the sections that we discussed earlier in the chapter.
• Avoid clutter. 3–5 bullet points per slide at most! Bullets should be keywords, not sentences.
• Make it readable for old people. Sans serif fonts. 28–40 point for headline text, 18–28 point for normal text, and 12–14 point font for references is a good place to start.
• Ensure that there is a clear contrast between the background and all text.
• Use visuals. Steer clear of videos unless completely necessary or exceptionally cool. In my experience, they NEVER work and they take lots of time away from your presentation. Figures are your best bet.
• Triple-check your spelling. A sure-fire way to lose credibility is to have typos in your presentation

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7 Steps to Delivering a Technical Presentation

June 21, 2021 - Dom Barnard

So you want to share the fruits of your technical labor with a presentation? Perhaps, you’re an engineer, a maker, a coder, or a designer, and you’re looking to discuss a research study, explain a process, or demonstrate a product.

Regardless of the agenda,  speaking to a group  can be intimidating. However, there are steps you can take to deliver an effective technical presentation that gets your point across and appeals to the audience.

Whether you’re presenting in person or via  web conferencing software , the following tips and best practices will help you be prepared, feel more confident, and set up the tools you need to conduct your presentation without any issues.

Know your subject matter

A great presentation isn’t about reading a bunch of slides – your attendees are capable of reading much faster on their own.

If you are going to pack your slides with dozens of details and bullet points, you might as well ditch the slides and write an article instead. It’s difficult for the audience to listen to a presenter and read a lot of information at the same time.

Your job as a presenter is to be the expert that your attendees expect you to be. Keep your slides simple and minimal. In fact, 91% of people say that  well-designed slides  help  boost their confidence  when giving a presentation.

Remember that your slides are not the star of the show, you are. Help your audience understand and make sense of what they are reading in your slides. To do this, make sure you are using a  suitable structure  for your presentation.

You can do these things only when you’re well-versed in what you’re presenting. The slides are supposed to be your outline, or simply a table of contents to remind you what to cover during the presentation.

Know your audience

Knowing your audience  is crucial for any presentation, but it’s even more important for a technical one. If your audience is as experienced and comfortable with the topic of your presentation as you are, then you don’t want to dumb it down to the extent that it bores them.

On the other hand, you don’t want to give a complex presentation to an audience with no clue of what you’re talking about.

There may also be times when your attendees are people with different levels of technical skill, experience, and interests. Then your job is to make sure that the content of your presentation is relevant and doesn’t alienate any of those segments.

Image Source:  Digital Clarity Group

To understand how technical you need to be, consider what your audience might already know and how much is required for them to understand to meet your goal.

If your objective is to acquire funding, for instance, your audience will be more interested in financial benefits than the technical details of your product. The idea is to meet the needs of your audience, not to fuel your passion for engineering.

Configure your IDE

Since you’re delivering a technical presentation, there may be instances where you’ll want to walk your audience through your development environment, code scripts, software demos, or other technical components.

However, you may have adjusted how things look on the screen according to what’s the most convenient for your usual workflow. And what’s good for working in your day-to-day routine may not render well as you go full screen in presentation mode.

If the attendees can’t decipher what’s on the screen, they’ll get confused and will find it hard to focus on your talk. So it’s important that you customize whatever you’re going to show in your presentation such that it’s easily readable and viewable.

There are several steps you can take to make this happen. First of all, don’t use dark backgrounds. Light-colored backgrounds are easy on the eyes. Second, adjust your font styles and sizes to make sure they’re big enough.

And finally, learn to zoom in on specific areas as required, depending on whether you’re using a  Windows PC  or a  Mac system .

Practice Presentation Skills

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Minimize distractions

Nothing is more annoying than to keep getting disruptive notifications or popups from in the middle of your presentation. These can be from your operating system (Windows or Mac), or apps such as Slack, Email, Twitter, and more.

At times, these notifications can be personal, embarrassing, or contain confidential information that you don’t want your audience to see.

Therefore, it’s best to make sure in advance that there are no unpleasant surprises. Before you get up to give your presentation, turning off your notifications can go a long way.

This will also reduce the number of processes running on your machine and free up available resources. As a result, the resource-intensive programs that are part of your presentation will run a lot smoother. Here’s how to turn off  notifications for Windows ,  Google Chrome , and  Mac .

Get the right equipment

If you want to be a master presenter, you should have the proper tools for the job. The basics include a desktop or laptop machine with good configuration, a big display screen, presentation software (usually MS Powerpoint or Keynote), and a clicker/pointer device.

A clicking device, like the  Logitech Wireless Presenter , can help you switch slides from wherever you are in the room, point to a specific part of a slide, and add an overall professional touch to your presentation.

In addition, you should have any cables (HDMI, VGA, USD, etc) and adapters required to connect the devices you are going to use for the presentation.

Conrad Delock USB 3.0 Network adapter

If you have no idea about what will be available at your presentation venue, then carry one piece of each of the commonly used cables and adapters. You’ll thank us later.

Rehearse in advance

Practice your slides and your demo multiple times before the presentation, even if you have presented the exact same thing in the past. Do not make any assumptions about your actual presentation environment based on your practice environment.

Technologies and situations change, and you may find things that catch you off guard. Run through everything at least once the night before just to be sure.

Practice your presentations with  interactive exercises .

Even better if you can record yourself during these rehearsal presentations and watch the recordings later to find areas of improvement.

Also, if you’re relying on downloading or doing something in front of the audience that may require a high-speed internet connection, don’t assume you’ll have access to such a network during your presentation. Download and install whatever you need ahead of time.

Finally, enjoy the experience

You’re giving a technical presentation, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring, or that you have to be serious all the time as you talk.

It’s okay to have fun, crack some jokes,  tell a story ,  ask a rhetorical question  or invite participation from the audience when presenting. In fact, a study showed that presentations that don’t let the audience participate see a  drop of 14%  in engagement.

Don’t worry too much about things going wrong. See every presentation as a dialogue with your attendees and an opportunity to learn and be a better presenter. If you are enjoying yourself, so will your audience.

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A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024

It’s time for a generative AI (gen AI) reset. The initial enthusiasm and flurry of activity in 2023 is giving way to second thoughts and recalibrations as companies realize that capturing gen AI’s enormous potential value is harder than expected .

With 2024 shaping up to be the year for gen AI to prove its value, companies should keep in mind the hard lessons learned with digital and AI transformations: competitive advantage comes from building organizational and technological capabilities to broadly innovate, deploy, and improve solutions at scale—in effect, rewiring the business  for distributed digital and AI innovation.

About QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey

QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI arm, helps companies transform using the power of technology, technical expertise, and industry experts. With thousands of practitioners at QuantumBlack (data engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and software engineers) and McKinsey (industry and domain experts), we are working to solve the world’s most important AI challenges. QuantumBlack Labs is our center of technology development and client innovation, which has been driving cutting-edge advancements and developments in AI through locations across the globe.

Companies looking to score early wins with gen AI should move quickly. But those hoping that gen AI offers a shortcut past the tough—and necessary—organizational surgery are likely to meet with disappointing results. Launching pilots is (relatively) easy; getting pilots to scale and create meaningful value is hard because they require a broad set of changes to the way work actually gets done.

Let’s briefly look at what this has meant for one Pacific region telecommunications company. The company hired a chief data and AI officer with a mandate to “enable the organization to create value with data and AI.” The chief data and AI officer worked with the business to develop the strategic vision and implement the road map for the use cases. After a scan of domains (that is, customer journeys or functions) and use case opportunities across the enterprise, leadership prioritized the home-servicing/maintenance domain to pilot and then scale as part of a larger sequencing of initiatives. They targeted, in particular, the development of a gen AI tool to help dispatchers and service operators better predict the types of calls and parts needed when servicing homes.

Leadership put in place cross-functional product teams with shared objectives and incentives to build the gen AI tool. As part of an effort to upskill the entire enterprise to better work with data and gen AI tools, they also set up a data and AI academy, which the dispatchers and service operators enrolled in as part of their training. To provide the technology and data underpinnings for gen AI, the chief data and AI officer also selected a large language model (LLM) and cloud provider that could meet the needs of the domain as well as serve other parts of the enterprise. The chief data and AI officer also oversaw the implementation of a data architecture so that the clean and reliable data (including service histories and inventory databases) needed to build the gen AI tool could be delivered quickly and responsibly.

Creating value beyond the hype

Let’s deliver on the promise of technology from strategy to scale.

Our book Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI (Wiley, June 2023) provides a detailed manual on the six capabilities needed to deliver the kind of broad change that harnesses digital and AI technology. In this article, we will explore how to extend each of those capabilities to implement a successful gen AI program at scale. While recognizing that these are still early days and that there is much more to learn, our experience has shown that breaking open the gen AI opportunity requires companies to rewire how they work in the following ways.

Figure out where gen AI copilots can give you a real competitive advantage

The broad excitement around gen AI and its relative ease of use has led to a burst of experimentation across organizations. Most of these initiatives, however, won’t generate a competitive advantage. One bank, for example, bought tens of thousands of GitHub Copilot licenses, but since it didn’t have a clear sense of how to work with the technology, progress was slow. Another unfocused effort we often see is when companies move to incorporate gen AI into their customer service capabilities. Customer service is a commodity capability, not part of the core business, for most companies. While gen AI might help with productivity in such cases, it won’t create a competitive advantage.

To create competitive advantage, companies should first understand the difference between being a “taker” (a user of available tools, often via APIs and subscription services), a “shaper” (an integrator of available models with proprietary data), and a “maker” (a builder of LLMs). For now, the maker approach is too expensive for most companies, so the sweet spot for businesses is implementing a taker model for productivity improvements while building shaper applications for competitive advantage.

Much of gen AI’s near-term value is closely tied to its ability to help people do their current jobs better. In this way, gen AI tools act as copilots that work side by side with an employee, creating an initial block of code that a developer can adapt, for example, or drafting a requisition order for a new part that a maintenance worker in the field can review and submit (see sidebar “Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes”). This means companies should be focusing on where copilot technology can have the biggest impact on their priority programs.

Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes

• “Taker” copilots help real estate customers sift through property options and find the most promising one, write code for a developer, and summarize investor transcripts.
• “Shaper” copilots provide recommendations to sales reps for upselling customers by connecting generative AI tools to customer relationship management systems, financial systems, and customer behavior histories; create virtual assistants to personalize treatments for patients; and recommend solutions for maintenance workers based on historical data.
• “Maker” copilots are foundation models that lab scientists at pharmaceutical companies can use to find and test new and better drugs more quickly.

Some industrial companies, for example, have identified maintenance as a critical domain for their business. Reviewing maintenance reports and spending time with workers on the front lines can help determine where a gen AI copilot could make a big difference, such as in identifying issues with equipment failures quickly and early on. A gen AI copilot can also help identify root causes of truck breakdowns and recommend resolutions much more quickly than usual, as well as act as an ongoing source for best practices or standard operating procedures.

The challenge with copilots is figuring out how to generate revenue from increased productivity. In the case of customer service centers, for example, companies can stop recruiting new agents and use attrition to potentially achieve real financial gains. Defining the plans for how to generate revenue from the increased productivity up front, therefore, is crucial to capturing the value.

Upskill the talent you have but be clear about the gen-AI-specific skills you need

By now, most companies have a decent understanding of the technical gen AI skills they need, such as model fine-tuning, vector database administration, prompt engineering, and context engineering. In many cases, these are skills that you can train your existing workforce to develop. Those with existing AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities have a strong head start. Data engineers, for example, can learn multimodal processing and vector database management, MLOps (ML operations) engineers can extend their skills to LLMOps (LLM operations), and data scientists can develop prompt engineering, bias detection, and fine-tuning skills.

A sample of new generative AI skills needed

The following are examples of new skills needed for the successful deployment of generative AI tools:

• data scientist:
• prompt engineering
• in-context learning
• bias detection
• pattern identification
• reinforcement learning from human feedback
• hyperparameter/large language model fine-tuning; transfer learning
• data engineer:
• data wrangling and data warehousing
• data pipeline construction
• multimodal processing
• vector database management

The learning process can take two to three months to get to a decent level of competence because of the complexities in learning what various LLMs can and can’t do and how best to use them. The coders need to gain experience building software, testing, and validating answers, for example. It took one financial-services company three months to train its best data scientists to a high level of competence. While courses and documentation are available—many LLM providers have boot camps for developers—we have found that the most effective way to build capabilities at scale is through apprenticeship, training people to then train others, and building communities of practitioners. Rotating experts through teams to train others, scheduling regular sessions for people to share learnings, and hosting biweekly documentation review sessions are practices that have proven successful in building communities of practitioners (see sidebar “A sample of new generative AI skills needed”).

It’s important to bear in mind that successful gen AI skills are about more than coding proficiency. Our experience in developing our own gen AI platform, Lilli , showed us that the best gen AI technical talent has design skills to uncover where to focus solutions, contextual understanding to ensure the most relevant and high-quality answers are generated, collaboration skills to work well with knowledge experts (to test and validate answers and develop an appropriate curation approach), strong forensic skills to figure out causes of breakdowns (is the issue the data, the interpretation of the user’s intent, the quality of metadata on embeddings, or something else?), and anticipation skills to conceive of and plan for possible outcomes and to put the right kind of tracking into their code. A pure coder who doesn’t intrinsically have these skills may not be as useful a team member.

While current upskilling is largely based on a “learn on the job” approach, we see a rapid market emerging for people who have learned these skills over the past year. That skill growth is moving quickly. GitHub reported that developers were working on gen AI projects “in big numbers,” and that 65,000 public gen AI projects were created on its platform in 2023—a jump of almost 250 percent over the previous year. If your company is just starting its gen AI journey, you could consider hiring two or three senior engineers who have built a gen AI shaper product for their companies. This could greatly accelerate your efforts.

Form a centralized team to establish standards that enable responsible scaling

To ensure that all parts of the business can scale gen AI capabilities, centralizing competencies is a natural first move. The critical focus for this central team will be to develop and put in place protocols and standards to support scale, ensuring that teams can access models while also minimizing risk and containing costs. The team’s work could include, for example, procuring models and prescribing ways to access them, developing standards for data readiness, setting up approved prompt libraries, and allocating resources.

While developing Lilli, our team had its mind on scale when it created an open plug-in architecture and setting standards for how APIs should function and be built.  They developed standardized tooling and infrastructure where teams could securely experiment and access a GPT LLM , a gateway with preapproved APIs that teams could access, and a self-serve developer portal. Our goal is that this approach, over time, can help shift “Lilli as a product” (that a handful of teams use to build specific solutions) to “Lilli as a platform” (that teams across the enterprise can access to build other products).

For teams developing gen AI solutions, squad composition will be similar to AI teams but with data engineers and data scientists with gen AI experience and more contributors from risk management, compliance, and legal functions. The general idea of staffing squads with resources that are federated from the different expertise areas will not change, but the skill composition of a gen-AI-intensive squad will.

Set up the technology architecture to scale

Building a gen AI model is often relatively straightforward, but making it fully operational at scale is a different matter entirely. We’ve seen engineers build a basic chatbot in a week, but releasing a stable, accurate, and compliant version that scales can take four months. That’s why, our experience shows, the actual model costs may be less than 10 to 15 percent of the total costs of the solution.

Building for scale doesn’t mean building a new technology architecture. But it does mean focusing on a few core decisions that simplify and speed up processes without breaking the bank. Three such decisions stand out:

• Focus on reusing your technology. Reusing code can increase the development speed of gen AI use cases by 30 to 50 percent. One good approach is simply creating a source for approved tools, code, and components. A financial-services company, for example, created a library of production-grade tools, which had been approved by both the security and legal teams, and made them available in a library for teams to use. More important is taking the time to identify and build those capabilities that are common across the most priority use cases. The same financial-services company, for example, identified three components that could be reused for more than 100 identified use cases. By building those first, they were able to generate a significant portion of the code base for all the identified use cases—essentially giving every application a big head start.
• Focus the architecture on enabling efficient connections between gen AI models and internal systems. For gen AI models to work effectively in the shaper archetype, they need access to a business’s data and applications. Advances in integration and orchestration frameworks have significantly reduced the effort required to make those connections. But laying out what those integrations are and how to enable them is critical to ensure these models work efficiently and to avoid the complexity that creates technical debt  (the “tax” a company pays in terms of time and resources needed to redress existing technology issues). Chief information officers and chief technology officers can define reference architectures and integration standards for their organizations. Key elements should include a model hub, which contains trained and approved models that can be provisioned on demand; standard APIs that act as bridges connecting gen AI models to applications or data; and context management and caching, which speed up processing by providing models with relevant information from enterprise data sources.
• Build up your testing and quality assurance capabilities. Our own experience building Lilli taught us to prioritize testing over development. Our team invested in not only developing testing protocols for each stage of development but also aligning the entire team so that, for example, it was clear who specifically needed to sign off on each stage of the process. This slowed down initial development but sped up the overall delivery pace and quality by cutting back on errors and the time needed to fix mistakes.

Ensure data quality and focus on unstructured data to fuel your models

The ability of a business to generate and scale value from gen AI models will depend on how well it takes advantage of its own data. As with technology, targeted upgrades to existing data architecture  are needed to maximize the future strategic benefits of gen AI:

• Be targeted in ramping up your data quality and data augmentation efforts. While data quality has always been an important issue, the scale and scope of data that gen AI models can use—especially unstructured data—has made this issue much more consequential. For this reason, it’s critical to get the data foundations right, from clarifying decision rights to defining clear data processes to establishing taxonomies so models can access the data they need. The companies that do this well tie their data quality and augmentation efforts to the specific AI/gen AI application and use case—you don’t need this data foundation to extend to every corner of the enterprise. This could mean, for example, developing a new data repository for all equipment specifications and reported issues to better support maintenance copilot applications.
• Understand what value is locked into your unstructured data. Most organizations have traditionally focused their data efforts on structured data (values that can be organized in tables, such as prices and features). But the real value from LLMs comes from their ability to work with unstructured data (for example, PowerPoint slides, videos, and text). Companies can map out which unstructured data sources are most valuable and establish metadata tagging standards so models can process the data and teams can find what they need (tagging is particularly important to help companies remove data from models as well, if necessary). Be creative in thinking about data opportunities. Some companies, for example, are interviewing senior employees as they retire and feeding that captured institutional knowledge into an LLM to help improve their copilot performance.
• Optimize to lower costs at scale. There is often as much as a tenfold difference between what companies pay for data and what they could be paying if they optimized their data infrastructure and underlying costs. This issue often stems from companies scaling their proofs of concept without optimizing their data approach. Two costs generally stand out. One is storage costs arising from companies uploading terabytes of data into the cloud and wanting that data available 24/7. In practice, companies rarely need more than 10 percent of their data to have that level of availability, and accessing the rest over a 24- or 48-hour period is a much cheaper option. The other costs relate to computation with models that require on-call access to thousands of processors to run. This is especially the case when companies are building their own models (the maker archetype) but also when they are using pretrained models and running them with their own data and use cases (the shaper archetype). Companies could take a close look at how they can optimize computation costs on cloud platforms—for instance, putting some models in a queue to run when processors aren’t being used (such as when Americans go to bed and consumption of computing services like Netflix decreases) is a much cheaper option.

Build trust and reusability to drive adoption and scale

Because many people have concerns about gen AI, the bar on explaining how these tools work is much higher than for most solutions. People who use the tools want to know how they work, not just what they do. So it’s important to invest extra time and money to build trust by ensuring model accuracy and making it easy to check answers.

One insurance company, for example, created a gen AI tool to help manage claims. As part of the tool, it listed all the guardrails that had been put in place, and for each answer provided a link to the sentence or page of the relevant policy documents. The company also used an LLM to generate many variations of the same question to ensure answer consistency. These steps, among others, were critical to helping end users build trust in the tool.

Part of the training for maintenance teams using a gen AI tool should be to help them understand the limitations of models and how best to get the right answers. That includes teaching workers strategies to get to the best answer as fast as possible by starting with broad questions then narrowing them down. This provides the model with more context, and it also helps remove any bias of the people who might think they know the answer already. Having model interfaces that look and feel the same as existing tools also helps users feel less pressured to learn something new each time a new application is introduced.

Getting to scale means that businesses will need to stop building one-off solutions that are hard to use for other similar use cases. One global energy and materials company, for example, has established ease of reuse as a key requirement for all gen AI models, and has found in early iterations that 50 to 60 percent of its components can be reused. This means setting standards for developing gen AI assets (for example, prompts and context) that can be easily reused for other cases.

While many of the risk issues relating to gen AI are evolutions of discussions that were already brewing—for instance, data privacy, security, bias risk, job displacement, and intellectual property protection—gen AI has greatly expanded that risk landscape. Just 21 percent of companies reporting AI adoption say they have established policies governing employees’ use of gen AI technologies.

Similarly, a set of tests for AI/gen AI solutions should be established to demonstrate that data privacy, debiasing, and intellectual property protection are respected. Some organizations, in fact, are proposing to release models accompanied with documentation that details their performance characteristics. Documenting your decisions and rationales can be particularly helpful in conversations with regulators.

In some ways, this article is premature—so much is changing that we’ll likely have a profoundly different understanding of gen AI and its capabilities in a year’s time. But the core truths of finding value and driving change will still apply. How well companies have learned those lessons may largely determine how successful they’ll be in capturing that value.

The authors wish to thank Michael Chui, Juan Couto, Ben Ellencweig, Josh Gartner, Bryce Hall, Holger Harreis, Phil Hudelson, Suzana Iacob, Sid Kamath, Neerav Kingsland, Kitti Lakner, Robert Levin, Matej Macak, Lapo Mori, Alex Peluffo, Aldo Rosales, Erik Roth, Abdul Wahab Shaikh, and Stephen Xu for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Barr Seitz, an editorial director in the New York office.

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Technical Writing, Presentational Skills, and Online Communication: Professional Tools and Insights 1st Edition

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Raymond Greenlaw received a BA in Mathematics from Pomona College in 1983 and an MS and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 1986 and 1988, respectively. He is a Research Scientist at Elbrys Networks, Inc. Ray is also the Leighton Endowed Distinguished Professor of Information Technology at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He is also the Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Chiang Mai University in Thailand. Ray holds a visiting professorship at the University of Management and Science in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He was the Founder and Dean of the School of Computing and Professor of Computer Science at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia. Ray also served as the Regional Coordinator for the State of Georgia's $100,000,000 Yamacraw Project, which was designed to make the state of Georgia a leader in the telecommunications field. Ray has won three Senior Fulbright Fellowships (Spain, Iceland and Thailand), a Humboldt Fellowship (Germany), a Sasakawa Fellowship and fellowships from Italy, Japan and Spain. He has published over 20 books in the areas of complexity theory, graph theory, the Internet, parallel computation, networking, operating systems, technical communications, theoretical computer science, the Web and wireless. He is one of the world's leading experts on P-completeness theory. His books have been used in over 140 Computer Science and Information Technology programs in the United States, as well as internationally and have been translated into several languages. Ray has lectured throughout the world presenting over 210 invited talks. He served on the Executive Committee for the Computing Accreditation Commission of ABET and was Chair of the Training Committee. His research papers have appeared in over 85 journals and conference proceedings. As a PI or co-PI, Ray has been awarded over $6,500,000 in grants and contracts, and his research has been supported by the governments of Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Ray is an avid outdoorsman. In 2003 Ray broke the world record for the fastest thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail by completing the 2,659-mile trail in 83 days. His book titled "The Fastest Hike" describes that epic journey. In 2011 Ray bicycled 3,477 miles across the USA from east to west in 36 days. Ray has run over 125 races, including the big four 100-mile runs and completed many Ironman triathlons. He has climbed 6 of the world's 7 summits. He is a NAUI Dive Master. Ray has been to 49 of the United States, 69 of 77 provinces in Thailand, half of the provinces in China, 102 countries, 7 continents and many islands, including Aruba, Bali, Boracay, Bermuda, Cooks, Cozumel, Fiji, Galapagos, Guam, Half-Moon Bay Cay, Heimaey, Isla del Sol, Koh Nang Yuan, Livingstone, Magdelena, Palau, Peleliu, Reunion, Similian, Tahiti, Tobago and US Virgin Islands, among others. He has traveled about 2,000,000 miles.

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Raymond "Wall" Greenlaw was born in Providence, Rhode Island to Roxy and Bob. He has always enjoyed nature, mountains, and the sea. Ray's passion is traveling. He took off for California at the age of 18 and received a BA in Mathematics from Pomona College in 1983. He then went up the west coast to get an MS in Computer Science in 1986 and a PhD in Computer Science in 1988 from the University of Washington. While in graduate school, he worked for Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft) at Asymetrix Corp. Ray spent his career as a professor: teaching and conducting research with his students and colleagues. He retired as the Office of Naval Research Distinguished Chair in Cyber Security from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Ray is a consultant, author, publisher, endurance athlete, investor, and a PADI Dive Instructor. His main hobbies are cycling, mountaineering, hiking, running, scuba diving, traveling, triathlon, and writing. For more details, please visit his website: drraymondgreenlaw.com.

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MacBook Air (15-inch, M2, 2023) - Technical Specifications

Year introduced: 2023

Identify your MacBook Air

Apple M2 chip

8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores

10-core GPU

16-core Neural Engine

100GB/s memory bandwidth

Media engine

Hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW

Video decode engine

Video encode engine

ProRes encode and decode engine

Liquid Retina display

15.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology; 1 2880-by-1864 native resolution at 224 pixels per inch 500 nits brightness

Support for 1 billion colors

Wide color (P3)

True Tone technology

Battery and Power 12

Up to 18 hours Apple TV app movie playback

Up to 15 hours wireless web

66.5-watt‑hour lithium‑polymer battery

35W Dual USB-C Port Compact Power Adapter

USB-C to MagSafe 3 Cable

Fast-charge capable with 70W USB-C Power Adapter

Charging and Expansion

MagSafe 3 charging port

3.5 mm headphone jack

Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports with support for:

DisplayPort

Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40Gb/s)

USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s)

USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s)

8GB unified memory

Configurable to 16GB or 24GB

Configurable to 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB

Keyboard and Trackpad

Backlit Magic Keyboard with:

78 (U.S.) or 79 (ISO) keys including 12 full-height function keys and 4 arrow keys in an inverted-T arrangement

Ambient light sensor

Force Touch trackpad for precise cursor control and pressure-sensing capabilities; enables Force clicks, accelerators, pressure-sensitive drawing, and Multi-Touch gestures

Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)

Bluetooth 5.3

1080p FaceTime HD camera

Advanced image signal processor with computational video

Six-speaker sound system with force-cancelling woofers

Wide stereo sound

Support for Spatial Audio when playing music or video with Dolby Atmos on built-in speakers

Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking when using AirPods (3rd generation), AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max

Three-mic array with directional beamforming

3.5 mm headphone jack with advanced support for high-impedance headphones

Display Support

Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and:

One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz

Thunderbolt 3 digital video output

Native DisplayPort output over USB‑C

VGA, HDMI, DVI, and Thunderbolt 2 output supported using adapters (sold separately)

Video Playback

Supported formats include HEVC, H.264, and ProRes

HDR with Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HLG

Audio Playback

Supported formats include AAC, MP3, Apple Lossless, FLAC, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, and Dolby Atmos

Operating Requirements

Line voltage: 100V to 240V AC

Frequency: 50Hz to 60Hz

Operating temperature: 50° to 95° F (10° to 35° C)

Storage temperature: –13° to 113° F (–25° to 45° C)

Relative humidity: 0% to 90% noncondensing

Operating altitude: tested up to 10,000 feet

Maximum storage altitude: 15,000 feet

Maximum shipping altitude: 35,000 feet

Size and Weight

Height: 0.45 inch (1.15 cm)

Width: 13.40 inches (34.04 cm)

Depth: 9.35 inches (23.76 cm)

Weight: 3.3 pounds (1.51 kg) 3

Operating System

macOS is the most advanced desktop operating system in the world. And with macOS Sonoma, work and play on your Mac are even more powerful — with new ways to elevate your video presentations, boost your gaming performance, and personalize your device.

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Accessibility

Accessibility features help people with disabilities get the most out of their new MacBook Air. With built-in support for vision, hearing, mobility, and learning, you can create and do amazing things.

Learn more about Accessibility

Features include:

Voice Control

Increase Contrast

Switch Control

Reduce Motion

Siri and Dictation

Live Captions

Built-in Apps 4

Photo Booth

QuickTime Player

Time Machine

Voice Memos

15-inch MacBook Air

USB-C to MagSafe 3 Cable (2 m)

Configure to Order

Configure your MacBook Air with these options at apple.com :

16GB or 24GB unified memory

512GB, 1TB, or 2TB SSD

70W USB-C Power Adapter

MacBook Air and the Environment

15-inch MacBook Air with M2 chip is designed with the following features to reduce its environmental impact: 5

See the 15-inch MacBook Air with M2 chip Product Environmental Report (PDF)

Made with better materials

100% recycled aluminum in the enclosure

100% recycled cobalt in the magnets of the MagSafe connector — a first for Apple

100% recycled rare earth elements in all magnets, representing 99% of the rare earth elements in the device

100% recycled tin in the solder of multiple printed circuit boards

100% recycled gold in the plating of multiple printed circuit boards

90% recycled steel in the battery tray

35% or more recycled plastic in multiple components

Energy efficient

ENERGY STAR ® certified 7

Smarter chemistry 8

Arsenic-free display glass

Mercury-, BFR-, PVC-, and beryllium‑free

Green manufacturing

Over 30% of manufacturing electricity sourced from supplier clean energy projects 9

No established final assembly supplier sites generate any waste sent to landfill 13

Responsible packaging

100% of the virgin wood fiber in the packaging comes from responsibly managed forests 10

99% or more fiber-based, due to our work to eliminate plastic in packaging 11

Progress toward our 2030 goal

Reduced emissions for 15-inch MacBook Air with M2 chip by 48% against our baseline 14

Apple and the Environment

Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and we are focused on our Apple 2030 goal to make every product carbon neutral.

See Apple’s commitment

Acoustic Performance

Declared noise emission values in accordance with ECMA-109

L W A,m is the mean A-weighted sound power level, rounded to the nearest 0.1 B.

L p A,m is the mean A-weighted sound pressure level measured at operator position (rounded to the nearest 1 dB).

1 B (bel) = 10 dB (decibel).

K v is the statistical adder for computing upper-limit of A-weighted sound power level.

The quantity, L W A,c (formerly called L W Ad ) may be computed from the sum of L W A,m and K v .

The wireless web test browses 6 tabs with a mix of content including media.

Configuration tested: M2, 8-core CPU / 10-core GPU, 8GB unified memory, 512GB storage.

Screen size is measured diagonally. The displays on the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air with M2 chip have rounded corners at the top. When measured as a standard rectangular shape, the screens are 13.6 inches and 15.3 inches diagonally (actual viewable area is less).

1GB = 1 billion bytes and 1TB = 1 trillion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.

Weight varies by configuration and manufacturing process.

iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are available on the Mac App Store. Downloading apps requires an Apple ID and a device that is compatible with the OS version required for each app.

Data accurate as of product launch.

Recycled material claim applies to the enclosure and is based on auditing done by UL LLC.

ENERGY STAR and the ENERGY STAR mark are registered trademarks owned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Apple's Regulated Substances Specification describes Apple's restrictions on the use of certain chemical substances in materials in Apple products, accessories, manufacturing processes, and packaging used for shipping products to Apple’s end-customers. Restrictions are derived from international laws or directives, regulatory agencies, eco-label requirements, environmental standards, and Apple policies. Every Apple product is free of PVC and phthalates except for AC power cords in India, Thailand (for 2-prong AC power cords), and South Korea, where we continue to seek government approval for our PVC and phthalates replacement. Apple products comply with the European Union Directive 2011/65/EU and its amendments, including exemptions for the use of lead such as high-temperature solder. Apple is working to phase out the use of these exempted substances for new products where technically possible.

We estimate the percentage of electricity-related emissions in our manufacturing that is sourced from clean electricity by attributing to our carbon model clean energy procured by our suppliers in the prior fiscal year, based on the supplier manufacturing allocations at time of product launch. Included in this number is only clean electricity that Apple or its suppliers have procured as part of Apple’s Supplier Clean Energy Program.

Responsible sourcing of wood fiber is defined in Apple’s Sustainable Fiber Specification . We consider wood fibers to include bamboo.

Breakdown of U.S. retail packaging by weight. Adhesives, inks, and coatings are excluded from our calculations of plastic content and packaging weight.

Testing conducted by Apple in April and May 2023 using preproduction 15-inch MacBook Air systems with Apple M2, 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See apple.com/batteries for more information.

All established final assembly supplier sites—those that have been Apple suppliers for more than one year—for 15-inch MacBook Air with M2 chip are third-party verified as Zero Waste by UL LLC (UL 2799 Standard). UL requires at least 90 percent diversion through methods other than waste to energy to achieve Zero Waste to Landfill (Silver 90–94 percent, Gold 95–99 percent, and Platinum 100 percent) designations.

Carbon reductions are calculated against a baseline scenario: 1) No use of clean electricity for manufacturing or product use, beyond what is already available on the grid (based on regional emissions factors). 2) Apple’s carbon intensity of key materials as of 2015 (our baseline year for our 2030 product carbon neutrality goal). Carbon intensity of materials reflects use of recycled content and production technology. 3) Apple’s average mix of transportation modes (air, rail, ocean, ground) by product line across three years (fiscal years 2017 to 2019) to best capture the baseline transportation emissions of our products.