How to Create Effective Hybrid PowerPoint Presentations

The pandemic years led us to change and adapt quickly and efficiently.

With resources suddenly becoming more and more scarce, we had to readjust the way we were accustomed to communicate our ideas in order to provide continuity for our business.

Since we could no longer meet in person, in record time we all found ourselves talking from behind a screen.

Now, it’s not like virtual presentations didn’t already exist, but they were an alternative we only went for in cases where the presentation wasn’t really crucial or where we were constrained by geographical limitations.

Virtual PowerPoint presentations were already an option, but we preferred to get together, lock ourselves in a room and face them together side by side.

This is true for every type of presentation, from periodic business presentations to corporate trainings.

I have been teaching the Lean Presentation Design training for years, literally traveling the world from the USA to Asia, without ever considering online training as a viable alternative.

Maurizio, but I’ve seen you do online trainings, or am I wrong?

Indeed!

Although I was already accustomed to them, I still considered them only as a backup option.

Then, all of a sudden what no one could have ever imagined happened, and everything stopped.

But business can’t stop, and so we found ourselves changing, out of the blue and without a choice – you either change or you’re out.

Soon, presenting on Teams, Zoom or similar tools became the new norm, and so we specialized in virtual presentations.

We adapted to not seeing each other, in some cases we forced participants to turn on their webcams, we adapted our slides, and we went crazy behind the technology!

Tools like Zoom and Teams have evolved at an impressive rate, offering new features and improving service quality.

So, are we finally in a stable place?

Absolutely not!

By now we’ve crossed the next boundary, that of hybrid PowerPoint presentations.

Have you tried them yet?

I already went through this last year while teaching at a university.

I even administered exams to my students in hybrid mode.

It’s not easy at all.

What Are Hybrid PowerPoint Presentations?

A hybrid presentation is when part of your audience is present, and part is remotely connected via a web conferencing tool like Teams or Zoom.

So, you – the speaker – are in the classroom with part of the audience, while another part of it is connected online.

As you can understand, this significantly affects the way we present, the type of setup we use, and the type of slides we will need to design.

Unlike virtual presentations, however, we can see hybrid PowerPoint presentations coming and have time to react.

Sure, you’ll need to adapt and do so quickly, but this time we’ll have a little extra time.

Maurizio, but are you sure that hybrid presentations are here to stay?

In my opinion, there is no doubt about it.

Let me tell you why.

Why Are Hybrid PowerPoint Presentations the Next Trend?

Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2021 shows that 66% of leaders are considering evolving their corporate spaces towards a hybrid way of working.

After two years of Covid there is talk of returning to the office, and in many companies, employees have already largely returned, albeit equipped with the appropriate masks.

There is also a big debate between those who absolutely want to continue working remotely and those who want to return to the office.

It only takes a reasonable average of opinions to see that the middle ground will be a hybrid future. In the meantime, Teams Rooms and Zoom Rooms are now a reality.

Giants like Ricoh have released digital whiteboards to facilitate interaction in hybrid meetings.

Hotels and coworking spaces are also gearing up accordingly.

For example, NH Hotels has realized a beautiful hybrid meeting room setup project with cutting-edge technology.

WeWork has shared several articles about the importance of going back to in-person work, and they’ve hit the ground running with interesting hybrid work-ready setups.

In short, in this situation of global bewilderment, the business world seems to be taking a very clear direction and pointing directly towards a way of working that combines being in presence with the virtual.

All this clearly affects the world of our beloved PowerPoint presentations, which represent the voice of our business ideas, our way of communicating in professional terms.

But it’s all different now.

In fact, you can’t think of creating a PowerPoint presentation in the same way you used to do it, nor can you expect to walk into the boardroom and present the way you’ve always done it.

Producing effective hybrid PowerPoint presentations is already a must, and this time we have the opportunity not to be caught unprepared.

Were you already thinking about it?

In this article, I’ll summarize the key recommendations for dealing with this new type of presentation while maximizing the effectiveness of your communication.

Tip #1: Become a Hybrid Presenter

Remember when you used to walk into the boardroom, plug your laptop into the projector, launch your presentation in slideshow mode, and start presenting?

Those days are very much over.

Today it isn’t quite so simple anymore but fear not – the basics remain the same.

So it’s not that different, Maurizio?

Let’s say it’s a bit more complex, but it’s all manageable if you proceed methodically.

Follow me and I’ll explain it to you.

First of all, you need to setup your hybrid presentation.

To do that, connect your laptop to the projector and make sure the screen is in extended mode (not shared).

This step is critical to have the control center on your laptop and use the projector screen to share slides with your two audiences.

So, you’ll have half of your laptop screen displaying PowerPoint in presenter mode, and the web conferencing tool displayed on the other half.

This way you can manage your presentation and be present in the virtual meeting for your remote audience.

Since this setup is implemented on your laptop, no one will see it but you.

Now, you can share the screen.

Or maybe not?

In fact, you could share the projector screen on which the PowerPoint slideshow will be projected (ALT + SHIFT + F5 shortcut) but I prefer to only share the slideshow.

That way, I’m sure your audience will only ever see the slideshow and nothing else!

I recorded this short video where I show you the steps on how to achieve this setup with just one screen.

With two, everything will be easier.

Would you ever have thought of using Microsoft Teams the way I showed you in the video?

When presenting in a hybrid way, you should always have in mind the experience your audience is having.

In Lean Presentation Design we always say that we design experiences and not slides, and it’s true! It is the experience of our audience that guides us in choosing the graphic and communicative layout of our presentations.

To succeed, you must have constant self-awareness in both your physical and virtual environment.

You should ask yourself, “how are the people in my two audiences seeing, hearing, perceiving me?”.

You will be the presenter, but also the director of the event. You will control the projector, the shared screens, your presence in the classroom and on camera.

Every detail is critical in delivering an effective presentation.

I could summarize the concept by saying that from a traditional presenter, in a hybrid setting you must take an extra step and become the director of your event.

Note: even a corporate meeting between colleagues is an important event. 

Therefore, in order to deliver a professional performance, you will need to be able to handle several tasks at once.

Don’t forget that you are also presenting in this context!

When presenting, I like to focus only on what I have to say and on my audience. I therefore tend to cut down on all activities that can distract me.

I therefore recommend that you set up and test everything before you start your presentation.

Yes, even if you are going to speak in a meeting room you need to keep in mind the setup of the virtual part, which can take time when dealing with unforeseen events.

After all, if you think about it, you’re targeting two very different audiences in terms of mode of use.

The virtual audience may not be able to talk, and in that case would only interact with you via chat. If you don’t have someone to read your messages, your presence in the chat stream becomes critical.

So, never forget about the remote audience part.

Finally, your position is also crucial. Pay special attention to windows that let in a lot of light, or you’ll risk being invisible to someone watching you remotely.

If, on the other hand, you are in a dark environment or you want to use an outline feature to make your silhouette stand out from the background and guarantee an optimal result, you’ll have to use lights.

Find out everything you need to know about lights in my ultimate guide to online presenting.

In summary, there are some beautiful light panels you can access on a shoestring budget that can totally change the delivery of your presentation.

In my case, when presenting from a seated position, I am very comfortable with the Elgato Key Light.

If you are presenting standing up, then you may have to resort to equipped rooms or perhaps some standing lights.

The Elgato Key Light is more of a desk arm light.

Either way, don’t neglect the lights, because they make all the difference.

Tip #2: Get Smart Equipment for Hybrid PowerPoint Presentations

If it used to be enough to show up with your laptop and, at best, an HDMI cable to be cautious, today that’s no longer enough.

I’ll share with you my travel setup that I just took a picture of:

See how many things I carry with me?

This is the setup for a fixed location – I wouldn’t carry a microphone that size if I were going to speak in a conference room or university.

However, there are a few tools that I always carry in my backpack so that I can be ready to present in any setting.

The main tool is the one you will never forget because it will always be with you: your smartphone.

Have you ever thought that with your smartphone you can enter the call and use it as a microphone and camera?

How do you mean, Maurizio?

I mean that you can join the call on Teams/Zoom both from your PC, with which you’ll share the screen but in mute and with the video off, and from your smartphone, with which you’ll share audio and video.

On Teams you can even connect more devices associating them to the same profile.

Your smartphone’s shooting quality is above average for any laptop. Therefore, you’ve already taken a big step forward without taking up too much space in your suitcase.

If you want to use your smartphone as a camera, though, you’ll need to consider using a travel tripod.

The best ones, in my opinion, are the ones that are moldable in shape because you can use them as a stand in any circumstance.

For example, I’m using a moldable one at my current location to anchor my camera to the light panel arm:

Remember to always connect your smartphone to your laptop to prevent it from running out of battery power while streaming. So, don’t forget an extra USB/USBC cable to carry with you (watch out for Apple devices, they have a dedicated format).

Another essential tool is a Bluetooth headset, which also allows you to have a microphone.

This way, you’ll be free to step away from your laptop and move around the meeting room during your presentation, talking to the present and remote audiences at the same time.

Be careful though, not all Bluetooth headsets are suitable.

In fact, all Bluetooth tools, not being connected with a cable, tend to quickly run out of battery, and will run out faster and faster each time.

So, I recommend using airpods – type earbuds where one is untethered from the other. That way, you can use one while charging the other and then swap them out when the one you’re using runs out of power.

Some good alternatives to Airpods are these TOZO or VEATOOL earbuds.

Using earbuds to listen to online speakers implies that only you will hear the remote audience interact.

You need to ask yourself if you want the in-person audience to interact with the remote audience. If so, each person in the audience should have a microphone so they can respond, and you should pass the sound from your earbuds to the speakers in the meeting room.

You can usually switch it to the projector or external speakers.

However, you’ll need to make sure that every live participant is also connected to the virtual conference room on Teams/Zoom.

Interaction is always a good thing but coordinating it can be tricky, and it can turn into chaos in no time.

So, if you have a large number of participants and you want to avoid problems in the interaction between the two audiences, you can ask the participants to interact via chat.

This way, you will always be the one doing all the talking.

If the live audience can’t hear the remote one, remember to repeat the questions you hear through your earphones.            

Tip #3: Plan the Post Presentation in Advance

It’s true that attending online meetings is much easier and smoother from an organizational standpoint. After all, you only need to log on for the time of the call, log off as soon as it ends and get on with your work.

In a hybrid mode, therefore, I expect that many will prefer to connect online rather than come to the classroom.

Unfortunately, though, there are many, often too many distractions that come into play during a virtual presentation.

The fact is that it’s so fluid that you often just launch it and continue working, answering emails, or perhaps responding to WhatsApp, which with its web version monopolizes our attention even on our PCs.

It’s up to you as a speaker to hold your audience’s attention, and in this guide I’ll share some advanced techniques for doing so: Online presentation: the ultimate guide.

One good technique is to record the meeting.

This way, those who didn’t attend can always watch it later.

I know, I know – there are different schools of thought.

Some say they shouldn’t be recorded so as not to give an extra excuse to get distracted, and some are in favor. Just recently, a fellow PowerPoint expert was explaining that by uploading his latest findings to a training portal that is also dedicated to former trainees, he has a way to keep generating value for them precisely because of these recordings.

I’m just going to share with you experience that happens to me when I train in my online Lean Presentation Design course.

Want to see the course program?

You can download the presentation from this page on my website.

And yes, I create presentations too!

A full course can take 6 or 7 virtual meetings, and it’s crucial not to miss any of them because otherwise you won’t be able to keep up with the subsequent meetings.

Since not everyone is always available during business hours, many people ask me to record the course so they can watch it at their leisure in the evening or over the weekend.

See?

You never know when the best time for people is to watch one of your presentations, and it’s not that they don’t want to watch it or that you didn’t perform, it’s just that we all have such busy schedules that it becomes difficult to be connected all the time.

So, remember that starting to record is great for your audience.

After the event, you’ll no longer be sharing paper documents, and my advice is to digitize all handouts for both live and remote audiences (obviously).

Therefore, design your presentations in a Lean way so that they run smoothly during the event, but provide them with notes so that they can be easily turned into digital handouts when you will distribute them after the event.

How do you create a handout, Maurizio?

It’s very simple but really useful when you’re short on time and need to create a presentation that you can both present and share. All you have to do is write in the PowerPoint notes and then print in A4 format with the notes on the page.

Tip #4: Keep in Mind That the Two Audiences Will Have Different Experiences

Lean Presentation Design teaches us to focus on the experience we design for people.

When it comes to hybrid PowerPoint presentations, you’ll be presenting to two audiences who will be having very different experiences at the same time.

Creating a presentation for just one type of experience is not easy, let alone two at the same time!

So, how do you do it?

Always put yourself in your audience’s shoes and think about how they will experience your interaction with your presentation.

You already know how to deal with those who will be present: you will have to manage their attention bouncing between you and your slides. So, you’ll need essential slides that display your message without stealing attention from you for too long.

After all, your audience’s attention needs to be on you most of the time, and only occasionally should it go to the slides.

On the other hand, you also have a remote audience that will see the presentation on a laptop screen, at best.

In fact, it might as well be a smartphone or tablet screen.

So, for the virtual audience you’ll need very basic slides with large fonts.

In hybrid presentations it becomes essential to avoid walls of text on the slides, or the remote viewer won’t be able to see anything.

Avoid animations or transitions and carefully include video content that may not be heard or work well online due to connectivity issues.

How often do videos appear slow or have no sound?

In a hybrid presentation you may not even notice it, but you may compromise the understanding of those following you remotely.

Those following you in the classroom have you and your slides in front of them, but those following you remotely have their screens in front of them, often with many other applications open.

It would be enough if distractions stopped at those available on the screen. Those who follow you remotely may be doing other things outside of what they are doing on their PC.

Tip #5: Coordinate Interaction Between Those Who Are Present and Those Who Are Not

The two audiences know about each other’s attendance, but if you don’t invite everyone into the same call, they won’t see each other and won’t be able to interact anyway.

So, is it important to connect audiences by getting live attendees on the call?

There are pros and cons.

Obviously, if you want to get them to interact, it’s important that they can at least chat with each other.

It may happen that people stop following you in person and end up following you on the screen even if they are in attendance.

So, always keep an eye on who is listening to you in the classroom and figure out if you’ve lost them to the screen.

The two audiences can interact via chat – which you’ll need to keep track of – or they can talk to each other.

In that case, those in the room will also need to be present in the virtual room even if only to ask you a simple question.

It’s natural for those in the room to ask you something, but it’s up to you to make sure that the question is heard and understood by those following you remotely.

If the speaker has a microphone and is also communicating within the conference call tool, great; if not, you’ll have to be the one to repeat the question for the remote participants.

Repeating a question as you are asked is a great technique to get everyone’s attention and make sure no one is lost.

Similarly, a question asked by a remote participant needs to be picked up by everyone, and those in the room need to be able to interact with the person asking the question.

That’s why it’s important that those present in the room are also connected to the virtual conference room.

Tip #6: Optimize Your Performance for Both Audiences 

One of the biggest losses we’ve suffered with the advent of virtual presentations is human interaction.

I agree that content can be communicated online and that there is a way to do it very effectively, but that doesn’t mean that your live performance doesn’t have a different impact.

In business settings this is not always the case; but on many occasions, it can make a difference.

After all, there’s a difference between you being in the classroom versus behind a screen, right?

Presenting face-to-face today, however, is not like live presentations used to be.

In fact, at the very least you’ll need to wear a mask.

True, you can still use your hands to gesture and emphasize your messages, but you will completely lose your facial expressions.

So, looking for a solution, I’m beginning to believe that transparent masks, obviously up to health regulations, are a viable solution for us presenters.

Why the transparent ones?

For the simple fact that your expressions will be perceived and consequently so will the feelings you want to communicate.

Even a simple laugh can go unnoticed with a mask covering your face.

Have you ever tried a transparent mask? I’m curious to know your point of view in the comments.

Also, you should always keep in mind that your movement will be constrained by the camera’s field.

Never forget your virtual audience – even if you can’t see them, they are all there to listen to you.

Tip #7: How to Share Your Laptop Screen

You’ll arrive in the meeting room, connect your laptop to the projector like you always used to, and you’ll be ready for your in-person audience.

Don’t forget the remote one, though!

So, connect to the conference room and share your presentation slideshow.

You can share the slideshow or you can share monitor 2, aka the projector, but what matters is what you will see on your laptop.

In fact, you’ll need to have an eye both on the conference room – the only point of contact with your virtual audience – and on PowerPoint’s presenter mode in order to anticipate the commentary on the next slide.

To figure out your ideal setup, you can take a cue from the setup instructions for virtual presentations.

Conclusions

It would certainly seem that hybrid presentations are the new frontier and, from a certain point of view, a great new challenge for presenters.

Hybrid presentations are already happening all over the world, and there will soon be a lot of attention on this topic.

There are technical tricks that can really make a difference, and I think you can discover and test some interesting ones in this article.

Personally, I think the fundamental paradigm remains the same: design the user experience you want for your audience, that’s how you will derive your presentation. 

Have you already tried presenting in hybrid?

What have you learned?