They Try to Make Me Go to Redraft
Heuristics for rewrites and rehearsals of your presentations and reports
If your organization is like most, your data story presentations and reports are put together in a rush — with little advanced planning or rehearsal time. Sometimes people even send slide decks back and forth to each other by email or IM as they are presenting!
If you want your stories and reports to be top-notch, you need to create a system to ensure that all team members are involved from the start and that the presentation is polished and ready to go by the time it’s scheduled or even anticipated to be scheduled.
Rehearsals and redrafts are not just an add-on or afterthought to your presentation process — they are a key part of a successful data storytelling process. The skill of “editing without mercy” is really part of taking your game from “good to great.”
Here are some things that you can start doing today to prepare for your next data story presentation or report to be more professional:
Create a system to track progress. I have often used Asana as a project management tool for client projects. However, for data story development I have found that Basecamp also works great because it allows you to create project sub-folders that are dedicated to specific…
