Presenting data not slides
by Bernard McGrath, Inspection Validation Centre

The Eagles' hit song, Hotel California, has the famous line: "you can check out any time you want but you can never leave". Phew! How glad am I that this is a written article and not a verbal presentation? At least I can't be asked to sing the line! I sometimes think that NDT is the career equivalent of the Hotel California. Once booked in it is very difficult to leave. I did manage it once. I checked out back in 1994. But a small number of years later I was back up to my neck in beam plots and couplant.

There is one lasting memory I have of my first year back and it carries a warning to all those of you who are about to give presentations at forthcoming conferences. As part of my re-education for having the audacity to think I could escape, I was sent to the BINDT conference. The winner of the Roy Sharpe Prize gave an invited presentation about the NDT projects he had worked on during his career. It contained much useful and interesting information. Not long after showing a slide of Green's Function in equation form, which I think contained every letter in the Greek alphabet, the speaker showed a much simpler text slide. But within that slide there was a stray bullet, a large isolated dot. The speaker's comment at the time was that PowerPoint has the habit of putting bullets where you don’t want them!

I think that everyone who uses Office software can sympathise; Word can change things when they travel from the PC to the printer. But the sad fact is, that whilst I could only tell you in general terms the gist of the presentation, I can clearly remember that stray bullet and think I always will.

But PowerPoint has been blamed for much more than a stray bullet. The presentation of only partial data in a slide show has been cited as a contributory factor to why the behaviour of the O-rings at low temperature was not seen as a threat to the space shuttle prior to the Challenger disaster. Whilst PowerPoint can raise the level of what otherwise would be a dull presentation, it can have the opposite effect of restricting what otherwise could be an engaging and frank talk/discussion. An example of this can be found on the web where there is an illustration of what Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address would have looked like if it had been given with PowerPoint.

Although I have submitted to the 'Power' and implemented fly-ins and fades and animations, I had to agree with an article written by a Lt Colonel H R McMaster, in which he says that PowerPoint slides lull potentially critical audiences in to passivity and that the process of bulletising ideas results in shallow analysis. He goes on to say: "The briefing dynamic often betrays an unspoken agreement between presenter and audience to give a higher priority to getting through the slides than examining the ideas and proposals that these slides represent".

I believe that the two most successful presentations I have given were when I used a small number of slides to stimulate discussion amongst the audience. And it was still possible to do this even when presenting first on the morning after the night of the conference dinner! So it was no surprise when I read in last month's Insight journal that this format was also a success in the Aerospace Symposium 2008. An afternoon session consisted of a user of a particular NDT discipline exchanging thoughts and questions with a manufacturer of equipment used in that discipline. The disciplines covered fluorescent dye penetrant, MPI and NADCAP. Such was the engaging nature of the discussions that the Chairman and audience had to join in!

So if you are presenting in the near future, concentrate on the message that you wish to convey. Try to engage and challenge the audience. It not only keeps them awake but it may mean that they will go away remembering what you have said and not just that stray bullet that PowerPoint inserted into one slide!

Please note that the views expressed in this column are the author’s own personal ramblings for the purpose of encouraging discussion within the NDT Newspaper. They do not represent the views of the IVC, Serco Assurance or the HSE who funded the PANI projects.

Letters can be mailed to The Editor, NDT News, 1 Spencer Parade, Northampton NN1 5AA. Fax: 01604 231489; E-mail: ndtnews@bindt.org or e-mail Bernard McGrath direct at Bernard.McGrath@sercoassurance.com