The President of the National Food Safety Information Service of Korea (NFSI), Dr. Eun Sook Moon, asked me to help with a presentation to talk about how the NFSI supports the Korean Food and Drug Administration (KFDA). The presentation was going to be attended by a mainly Asian-Pacific audience made up of food safety experts working in each countries’ respective governments. But the VVIPs were the WHO and FAO.
Yes, THE WHO. And the FAO…the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Two heavyweights were going to be there so it was important to make a good impression. Additionally, the NFSI wanted to promote the amazing information database system they use. It’s this system, plus the extremely talented NFSI staff that provide the support for the KFDA.
Since the audience was mainly non-native English speakers, the slides had to help communicate the message even if the audience couldn’t catch what was spoken. I made sure to keep to a single point per slide to make it easy for the audience to follow. This also made it easier for Dr. Moon to focus on what to say without having to worry about extra points. The other consideration was that it was likely the audience was going to want a PDF or the PowerPoint slides to have documentation they could take home or have emailed. So the slides had to be easy enough to understand without becoming a document.
To conclude the presentation, I suggested that we introduce the NFSI staff by letting them introduce themselves in a video. Sounds boring, but what you don’t know is that since the NFSI monitors and collects food safety information from 48 countries worldwide, they have staff that can speak Korean, plus at least one of SIX other languages! I thought it’d be a cool idea to let those talented people show off by introducing themselves using whatever other language they speak.
One of the biggest challenges in preparing a presentation with statistics, dates and events is keep a good flow and not bog down the audience. At the same time, you need to give them enough information so they come away with a good impression and so they will be motivated to want more detailed information. So in addition to explaining some stats and information, we decided to show a day-in-the-life of the NFSI’s database system. The system I mentioned earlier as being a critical component of the NFSI’s work.
The end result was a presentation that clearly demonstrated what the NFSI does. The presentation also showed the potential the organisation has to be at the center of food safety management in Asia-Pacific. Plus, it was nice to let their staff show off a little bit, too.
Below are the presentation slides. The staff intro video is just below the slides.
If you’ve got a big presentation and need some help getting the message and content right, get in touch with me. You can contact me via email at carl@carlkwan.com or by phone at 010-9087-2086 in Korea or 82-10-9087-2086 from outside of Korea.