Navigating the intricate world of technology requires more than just expertise; it demands the ability to share that knowledge effectively. This article embarks on a journey to uncover the most effective strategies for crafting presentations tailored for the tech-savvy audience. We will dissect the elements that make a presentation not just informative, but memorable and engaging. From leveraging the latest tools to understanding the nuances of audience engagement, we aim to provide a comprehensive guide that empowers tech professionals to deliver their message with precision and impact. We’ll discuss these strategies with U.S. M365 MVP Melissa Marshall.

MVP Melissa Marshall

Share with us your journey into becoming a top-level presenter.

I started my career as a professor at Penn State University, where I taught public speaking courses for engineering students. While I was there, I had the good fortune to give a TED Talk entitled “Talk Nerdy to Me” about the importance of science communication, and that really launched my ideas on scientific presentations into global prominence. I began to receive additional invitations to speak at conferences and provide training workshops at companies and institutions.  In 2015, I went full-time into my speaking, training, and consulting business, Present Your Science.  I now help the leading tech professionals and companies in the world present their work in a meaningful and compelling way that inspires stakeholders to take action.

Could you please share with us the three main tools to improve presentations?

Be audience-centric. Your ability to be successful as a speaker depends upon your ability to make your audience successful.
TIP: Be an interpreter of your work, not a reporter. Always connect each piece of technical info to a “So what?” point.

Filter and Focus. When you try to share everything, you share nothing.
TIP: Start your planning with the ‘view’ you want your audience to have at the end of the talk. Then ask yourself “What would they need to know in order to get there?”

Show Your Science. Your slides should do something for you that your words cannot. This means make your slides VISUAL not VERBAL.
TIP: Avoid bullet points (seriously!). Have a brief take-away message at the top of each slide and support it with visual evidence.

What are the main challenges that presenters face during a presentation?  

Presenters often allow the “status quo” of how slides are typically designed in their industry or at their company to dictate their choices.  Unfortunately, this status quo is often rooted in text heavy, bulleted slides which are not successful for an audience.  Instead of designing slides how you have always seen it done, I think presenters need to use a more strategic, evidence-based approach for their slide design.  That’s why I worked with the MS PowerPoint team to create this slide design template for technical presenters. This template is fully customizable, but it helps to lead the presenter to a design strategy that focuses on take away messages supported by visual evidence.  Which is a big step in the right direction for technical slides that are more successful for an audience.  

Also, presenters often struggle to filter their details in presentations, and they overwhelm the audience with too much information.  This can be improved by beginning your preparation by identifying the most critical single message you must convey.  And then focus on including information that relates to that message.

When sharing data, it’s important to be very descriptive about not just what the data is, but why the data is significant. It is easy to get in the habit of simply sharing the information, without providing context for it.

How are you using AI today to help you with presentations?  

I love sharing PowerPoint Speaker Coach with my clients.  This is an awesome AI-Driven tool that provides the speaker with private feedback on presentation elements like rate of speaking, emphasis, verbal fillers, and inclusive language.  It’s a great way to add some structure and purpose to practicing a presentation. 

What advice would you have for tech professionals beginning their journey presenting?

Look for more opportunities to present!  Most people have some anxiety associated with speaking in front of others, which causes them to avoid those situations as much as possible. However, the answer to becoming more comfortable speaking is to simply DO IT MORE.  It’s counterintuitive to what we feel like we want to do, but if you embraced the discomfort of presenting more often, you would find quite quickly that you are all the sudden becoming more comfortable and confident.  

In summary, the journey through the landscape of technical presentations is one of continuous learning and adaptation. The strategies discussed here provide a roadmap for creating presentations that not only convey complex information but also engage and inspire the tech community. By weaving together a narrative that resonates with the audience, utilizing visual aids to clarify and emphasize key points, and delivering with confidence and passion, presenters can leave a lasting impact. As technology continues to advance, so must our approach to sharing it. Let this article serve as a catalyst for innovation in your presentation techniques, empowering you to illuminate the path forward in the ever-changing world of technology.

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

At the M365 Community Conference in Orlando, we were told that a “Copilot Flight Crew” challenge would be starting on June 1st but I am unable to find any information about it. See image from presentation below: 

​At the M365 Community Conference in Orlando, we were told that a “Copilot Flight Crew” challenge would be starting on June 1st but I am unable to find any information about it. See image from presentation below:   Read More

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I have a problem with the Project Online (PWA). Every time I create a new project, I open it through Project Desktop, adding all the tasks, save it, and check in, everything looks fine. But the next day, when I open it, all my tasks are gone. I have given my users owner permissions to the SharePoint Site Project Web App to they check off any task in the task list. Also, when I open the project website in SharePoint, all the tasks are there, but when I open it through Project Desktop with different users, all is gone. Do you know why this is happening and how to fix it?

I have a backup to restore my project but frustrating and I don’t know what to do. Please advise.

​I have a problem with the Project Online (PWA). Every time I create a new project, I open it through Project Desktop, adding all the tasks, save it, and check in, everything looks fine. But the next day, when I open it, all my tasks are gone. I have given my users owner permissions to the SharePoint Site Project Web App to they check off any task in the task list. Also, when I open the project website in SharePoint, all the tasks are there, but when I open it through Project Desktop with different users, all is gone. Do you know why this is happening and how to fix it? I have a backup to restore my project but frustrating and I don’t know what to do. Please advise.    Read More

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Issue

An issue was brought to our attention recently where an azure SQL DB was throwing TempDB related errors although the customer felt that the TempDB usage never came close to the value published in the official Microsoft document. Here’s the error the customer had complained about:

Error

Here is a more detailed error text :

The database ‘tempdb’ has reached its size quota. Partition or delete data, drop indexes, or consult the documentation for possible resolutions.’. Possible failure reasons: Problems with the query, ‘ResultSet’ property not set correctly, parameters not set correctly, or connection not established correctly.

WorkAround/Fix:

The customer wanted to know the TempDB allocated to them. While the official documentation suggested that the SLO had 1.2 TB of Temp DB, In reality they always received a TempDB full error after 64GB.

I asked their technical team to run the following command to check the current Temp DB space allocated:

SELECT FileName = df.name,
   current_file_size_MB = df.size*1.0/128,
   max_size = CASE df.max_size
     WHEN 0 THEN ‘Autogrowth is off.’
     WHEN -1 THEN ‘Autogrowth is on.’
     ELSE ‘Log file grows to a maximum size of 2 TB.’
   END,
   growth_value =
     CASE
       WHEN df.growth = 0 THEN df.growth
       WHEN df.growth > 0 AND df.is_percent_growth = 0 THEN df.growth*1.0/128.0
       WHEN df.growth > 0 AND df.is_percent_growth = 1 THEN df.growth
     END,
   growth_increment_unit =
     CASE
       WHEN df.growth = 0 THEN ‘Size is fixed.’
       WHEN df.growth > 0 AND df.is_percent_growth = 0  THEN ‘Growth value is MB.’
       WHEN df.growth > 0 AND df.is_percent_growth = 1  THEN ‘Growth value is a percentage.’
     END
FROM tempdb.sys.database_files AS df;
GO

The Output that was shared, verified that the TempDB allocated was indeed 1.2TB as described in the public documentation against the DB SLO. Here’s the output:

Now the next step was to check what was the free space available in the TempDB at that point because per the customer, they were not having any heavy-duty jobs/queries running on the DB at that time. I asked them to execute the query below:

— Determining the amount of free space in tempdb
SELECT SUM(unallocated_extent_page_count) AS [free pages],
  (SUM(unallocated_extent_page_count)*1.0/128) AS [free space in MB]
FROM tempdb.sys.dm_db_file_space_usage;

 — Determining the amount of space used by the version store
SELECT SUM(version_store_reserved_page_count) AS [version store pages used],
  (SUM(version_store_reserved_page_count)*1.0/128) AS [version store space in MB]
FROM tempdb.sys.dm_db_file_space_usage;

 — Determining the amount of space used by internal objects
SELECT SUM(internal_object_reserved_page_count) AS [internal object pages used],
  (SUM(internal_object_reserved_page_count)*1.0/128) AS [internal object space in MB]
FROM tempdb.sys.dm_db_file_space_usage;

 — Determining the amount of space used by user objects
SELECT SUM(user_object_reserved_page_count) AS [user object pages used],
  (SUM(user_object_reserved_page_count)*1.0/128) AS [user object space in MB]
FROM tempdb.sys.dm_db_file_space_usage;

The output shared by the team below surprised even the customer as they didn’t expect to see this in their DB. Here’s the output:

Now the next question from the team was what was occupying >95% space on their TempDB. While I pointed out a specific section from the official documentation, I had to send them a query to get some material evidence around this. Here’s the public documentation states around User object Pages Used section in the output above:

user_object_reserved_page_count – Total number of pages allocated from uniform extents for user objects in the database. Unused pages from an allocated extent are included in the count.
You can use the total_pages column in the sys.allocation_units catalog view to return the reserved page count of each allocation unit in the user object. However, note that the total_pages column includes IAM pages.

                                       The following objects are included in the user object page counters:

User-defined tables and indexes
System tables and indexes
Global temporary tables and indexes
Local temporary tables and indexes
Table variables
Tables returned in the table-valued functions

After that I shared the query below to help them investigate more into their TempDB:

SELECT 
    OBJECT_NAME(p.object_id) AS TableName,
    au.*
FROM 
    tempdb.sys.allocation_units au
JOIN 
    tempdb.sys.partitions p ON au.container_id = p.partition_id
JOIN 
    tempdb.sys.objects o ON p.object_id = o.object_id
WHERE 
    au.type_desc = ‘IN_ROW_DATA’; — Optional: Add condition based on allocation unit type

Here is the output that we received and this explained the entire scenario to the customer:

The output above indicated that the 3rd party application that was connecting to the Azure SQL DB, was creating a lot of Global Temp Objects or objects that seem to persist beyond the session lifetime inside the Temp DB. The sum of the space occupied by those objects was a little over 1 TB, thereby explaining the 64 GB Temp DB space left for the rest of the queries. The customer also suspected that a new module of the 3rd party vendor could be either creating permanent objects inside the Temp DB or objects that are different from the usual Temp objects. After the discussion, the customer started a separate conversation with their vendor to address the issue.

They however had a complete understanding of the issue by the end of the troubleshooting session.

References

SORT_IN_TEMPDB Option For Indexes – SQL Server | Microsoft Learn

tempdb database – SQL Server | Microsoft Learn

Index Disk Space Example – SQL Server | Microsoft Learn

Azure SQL DB and TEMPDB usage tracking – Microsoft Community Hub

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

I created a new A/D Server 2022 to replace my A/D Server 2012.  The install completed and the FSMO roles transferred fine.  However, I cannot manage the A/D GPO.   In looking at the logs, it appears that DNS cannot replicate.   

Password hash synchronization failed for domain: mrc.net, domain controller hostname: MIDSRVR01.mrc.net, domain controller IP address: 172.16.1.43. Details:
Microsoft.Online.PasswordSynchronization.SynchronizationManagerException: Unable to open connection to domain: mrc.net. Error: There was an error establishing a connection to the directory replication service. Domain controller hostname: MIDSRVR01.mrc.net, domain controller IP address: 192.168.99.12 —> Microsoft.Online.PasswordSynchronization.DirectoryReplicationServices.DrsCommunicationException: There was an error establishing a connection to the directory replication service. Domain controller hostname: MIDSRVR01.mrc.net, domain controller IP address: 192.168.99.12 —> Microsoft.Online.PasswordSynchronization.DirectoryReplicationServices.DrsException: There was an error creating the connection context. —> Microsoft.Online.PasswordSynchronization.DirectoryReplicationServices.DrsCommunicationException: RPC Error 1722 : The RPC server is unavailable. Error creating the RPC binding handle

The original A/D Server 2012 is multi-honed and it appears DNS is trying to use an IP Address on a private segment 192.168.99.12 which isn’t available to the new Server.  The new server is on segment 172.16.1.x. 

If I look at DNS, the server IP addresses appears in this order.  How an I make the 172.16.1.43 the primary address?

How can I change the IP address to point to the other segment?

​I created a new A/D Server 2022 to replace my A/D Server 2012.  The install completed and the FSMO roles transferred fine.  However, I cannot manage the A/D GPO.   In looking at the logs, it appears that DNS cannot replicate.    Password hash synchronization failed for domain: mrc.net, domain controller hostname: MIDSRVR01.mrc.net, domain controller IP address: 172.16.1.43. Details: Microsoft.Online.PasswordSynchronization.SynchronizationManagerException: Unable to open connection to domain: mrc.net. Error: There was an error establishing a connection to the directory replication service. Domain controller hostname: MIDSRVR01.mrc.net, domain controller IP address: 192.168.99.12 —> Microsoft.Online.PasswordSynchronization.DirectoryReplicationServices.DrsCommunicationException: There was an error establishing a connection to the directory replication service. Domain controller hostname: MIDSRVR01.mrc.net, domain controller IP address: 192.168.99.12 —> Microsoft.Online.PasswordSynchronization.DirectoryReplicationServices.DrsException: There was an error creating the connection context. —> Microsoft.Online.PasswordSynchronization.DirectoryReplicationServices.DrsCommunicationException: RPC Error 1722 : The RPC server is unavailable. Error creating the RPC binding handle The original A/D Server 2012 is multi-honed and it appears DNS is trying to use an IP Address on a private segment 192.168.99.12 which isn’t available to the new Server.  The new server is on segment 172.16.1.x.   If I look at DNS, the server IP addresses appears in this order.  How an I make the 172.16.1.43 the primary address?  How can I change the IP address to point to the other segment?  Read More

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