A good property of any presentation is that it must be scalable: the presenter should be able to give the same talk in 10 minutes or in one hour. To achieve this goal, the presenter must understand the goal of the presentation and be able to summarize the discussion based on four to six key points:

Introduction and Outline Background Primary Point 1 Primary Point 2 Primary Point 3 Primary Point 4 Primary Point 5 Summary and Conclusions Questions and Answers

Associated with each primary topic could be a number of secondary topics. In a shortened presentation, the secondary topics could simply be enumerated with a comment or two to form the presentation of the primary topic, while in a longer presentation, the speaker could elaborate on each of the given secondary topics.

Introduction and Outline Background Primary Point 1 Overview Secondary Point 1.1 Secondary Point 1.2 Secondary Point 1.3 Secondary Point 1.4 Review Primary Point 2 Overview Secondary Point 2.1 Secondary Point 2.2 Secondary Point 2.3 Review Primary Point 3 Overview Secondary Point 3.1 Secondary Point 3.2 Secondary Point 3.3 Secondary Point 3.4 Review Primary Point 4 Overview Secondary Point 4.1 Secondary Point 4.2 Review Primary Point 5 Overview Secondary Point 5.1 Secondary Point 5.2 Secondary Point 5.3 Review Summary and Conclusions Questions and Answers

Each primary topic is introduced with an overview which covers the secondary topics. The secondary topics are then presented in order and the primary topic concludes with a review of the secondary topics. Like before, this ensures that the audience has understood both the significance of the primary topic and the support from the secondary topics.

Beyond this, the secondary topics themselves could be broken into further tertiary topics.

Benefits

A scalable presentation allows the presenter to dynamically lengthen or shorten a discussion without too much difficulty. This also forces the presenter to carefully consider his or her presentation and it consequently allows the audience to retain the information better. This also makes for very effective hand outs.

Example

The presentation based on this set of guidelines is a good example of scalability.

The Six- to Ten-Minute Presentation

1. Introduction and Outline
2. Background
3. Enthusiasm and Expertise
4. Organization
5. Visual Aids
6. Presentation Skills
7. Summary and Conclusions
8. Questions and Answers

The Half-Hour Presentation

1. Introduction and Outline
2. Background
3. Enthusiasm and Expertise
4. Organization
1. Objective
2. Structure
3. Scalability
4. Time
5. Flow
5. Visual Aids
1. Look and Feel
2. Slide Text
3. Images
4. Data and Charts
5. Other Slide Elements
6. Presentation Software
7. Look and Feel
6. Presentation Skills
1. Fear
2. Composure
3. Communication
4. Presentation Aids
7. Summary and Conclusions
8. Questions and Answers

The Two-Hour Presentation

The actual presentation is two hours, however, the topics covered are identical, the secondary topics are, where necessary, simply broken down in tertiary topics, each of which is discussed in detail.

To visualize this, simple look at the Table of Contents.