TWHS#103: Tech Show London - What I Actually Said - Planning Presentations
Mar 10, 2026
Hey Folks
On stage at Tech Show London last week I delivered a session to a crowd of 200 ish people. It was "Be More Valuable. Build Your Human Skills That AI Can't Replace".
My main point is that AI isn't very good at interfacing with the real world. It's great a coding, accessing knowledge and all sorts of other things. So to thrive in tech, build your AI skills AND invest in your human skills.
I took a bit of a risk and did a "Choose Your Own Adventure". The audience voted which 2 topics they wanted to hear from this list:
- Giving Feedback
- Active Listening
- Planning Presentations
- Storytelling
They voted for options 3 and 4. Planning Presentations and Storytelling.
I promised that I would follow up with all 4 topics in the Tech World Human Skills weekly. So over the next 4 weeks that's what I`m covering. So let's go.
Planning Presentations
AOREN is a framework to help you elevate your presentations and Technical Storytelling. It helps you select relevant content, that will maximise impact and drive action. Before I design the slides, plan my demos, choose the stories I want to tell I always complete this template:
Here it is:
- Audience
- Objective
- Remembered
- Energy/Emotion
- Next Steps
Audience
The audience is the centre of your presentation not you. You need to know your audience, be relevant to them and be valuable. It's essential to build understanding and empathy for the different personas that will be in your audience. It's the foundation of everything else.
Objective
Your audience have an objective for listening to you. Empathise with them and understand it. As you select the topics that you'll talk about, keep referencing the objective of your audience. Why your audience bothered to show up? Does your content meet their objective?
You also have an objective for delivering the presentation. Be clear in your mind what it is. If you have no clarity on your objective then your presentation will be as woolly as an old knitted jumper.
Remembered
Don't just spurt out everything you know on a topic. It will lack structure and people will be overwhelmed. Instead identify what few things you want your audience to remember. No more than 5 things and 3 things is best. Structure everything around those key messages.
Emotion
"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou
Have you ever thought about how you want your audience to feel? Maybe not. And yet science and history show that if you can connect on an emotional level, as well as a rational level you can persuade people more effectively, and ensure people remember you message. People remember feelings, not statistics.
Next Steps
Your Next Steps strategy should not be, "I`ll send you the slides". Be intentional on what you want your audience to do next. The presentation is never the end, it's the means to the end. So create a frictionless set of steps that you want your audience to take following the presentation.
Whenever I`m preparing for a presentation, important meeting or event I fill out an AOREN template.
And when I say template, I mean I write down each of the 5 headings and jot a couple of bullet points down for each heading.
Then I use that reference for all the decisions I need to make as I build the content.
Next week - Storytelling.
Hope this helps.
Ben
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Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
- Leaders In Tech: Raise the impact of your team. Make them more influential, memorable and successful with customers everyday. The Technical Storytelling Professional Program enables them to create clarity, generate energy and drive the results you need.
- Individuals: Accelerate your career and build your reputation. Develop the skills to help you present, influence and explain in the tech world. Check out the Technical Storytelling Essentials or Tech Community Speaker courses.
- Tech World Human Skills Podcast: The latest episode is "Building an AI Native Engineering Team" with Nic Neate. Check it out on the Elevated You website, Apple, Spotify, YouTube or Amazon Podcasts.
