Otdfbt

To begin with, we have a diverse team from different background. They speak a different language than what I speak, so often they communicate and I don't understand or communicate at all.

Problem: On a certain event I had a 2 hour time slot to demo a certain tool and within a certain scope. To realize the potential of the tool - I added some technicality to the scope - However I would ultimately fall back to the scope, I deemed the technical background necessary.

One colleague - one with 0 technical background cut me mid-way and asked several vague questions that did not make any sense. All I wanted was to demo a sample and fallback to my scope at the end of the demo to consolidate the common understanding of the tool. And in my favor, I was well within my designated time, and given a chance to properly finish the presentation, I would have enough time to answer any and every question. My manager was present at the presentation - he tried to help the situation a bit, but in any case, I lost the time and my properly built tools that were in exact scope were never demoed. For me, it ended bitter as I was quite passionate about what I had done, only my colleague spoilt it with out of turn vague questions.

Point in fact that I never or minimally spoke for the entire day - the only time I spoke was my presentation and all I wanted was to do it right. That was all the time I had.

How should I handle this situation? To be more precise, I want to bring this upto my manager. The colleague in question is actually quite meddling and I know at least one employee is already leaving for this colleagues behavior. My manager is a super kind super nice man - I don't know how to hint/update him that people should deserve their time at least when in a presentation for which they have worked passionately? Or is it standard industry practice?

It's a learned skill to be able to look at a person and say "Please wait until the end to ask that question", or "I'll get to your questions at the end". You need to learn to be assertive and run the show.

Having said that, what to do now? Ask your manager if he has any questions about it. Hint that you know that he may not have heard all he needed to hear since you kept getting interrupted. Ask him if he understood it, and if not, perhaps another presentation might be in order, or if he would champion the idea. At a minimum, maybe he would be able to help manage the coworker next time.

Or, you may need to simply come out and tell your manager you wanted to present more, but this particular coworker didn't give you a chance.

If you're going to give a talk to an audience which has a mixed or unknown composition, you must structure it so that everyone gets something out of it. 2 hours is a very long time. That is more than most people can absorb unless they already know the subject matter intimately.

The fact that you got what you called "vague nonsense" questions is both a good and bad sign. It is good because it means that someone was engaged and brave-enough to ask a question. It is bad because it was a signal to you that your talk was being misunderstood (that's your fault).

It would have been better to communicate the purpose of the demo first, then perform the demo, then outline an explanation of how it works, and finally go into detail with background for people who are interested.

A demo is best structured as follows:

1. Motivation/Purpose


2. Demo


3. Basic explanation of how it works


4. Discussion of implications or future work


5. Time for detailed questions and/or background

Answer questions as they come. It's OK to defer very detailed questions until later, but simple questions and misunderstandings should be cleared immediately. If someone asks a simple question (or a confused one) that means you are not communicating to them. If you don't answer them until the end, it means they will get nothing out of the talk.

Unlike other answers, you absolutely can not wait until the end to answer questions. Not in a two hour presentation. If someone needs a clarification to follow along, and can't get it, you lost that person and they won't get the rest of the presentation.

You need to plan for questions. That means both in timing and in slots for them.

Plan how many questions you expect, then add a bit to be on the safe side, and substract that time from the total. Fit your actual presentation in that resulting time.

Also plan when to answer questions. You can do so immediately, at the end of a section, or after every or every few slides. If you regularily turn to the audience and ask if there are any questions, they will understand that this is the appropriate time to ask. If you push any questions that interrupt you to that point with a friendly "I'll come to that in a moment, just let me complete this slide/section", they will understand that this is the only appropriate time.

If someone dwells on a question that you believe you have answered sufficiently, offer them to come to you afterwards, and remind everyone that for the sake of the rest of the audience (not for your sake!) you will continue now.

While you were excited about the stuff you wanted to demo, the actual purpose of the presentation was to transport knowledge to the audience. If you need to answer questions to do so, then that is very much part of the presentation. Instead of coming to your manager as someone who wants to complain about a co-worker, come to him and ask for his feedback. Was your presentation clear and easy to follow? What can you do to improve information transfer? Only if the manager says that everything was fine on those fronts you can wonder why that guy kept interrupting.

How should I handle this situation?

The lesson to learn here is that for similar demos/presentations in the future you should politely respond to any such interruptions by saying that you will address any questions at the end (make sure you leave a suitable amount of time in your plan for this). This is totally reasonable - especially since it's not uncommon for questions like this to be suitably addressed during the already planned presentation content, and with extra bonuses in that if it's a trivial vague question that they may well have forgotten about asking it by the end anyway.

To be more precise, I want to bring this upto my manager.

To what end? What can your manager really do beyond suggesting that you implement the above going forward?

My manager is a super kind super nice man

Then do him a solid and don't waste his time with this playground "he spoiled my turn" whining.

I don't know how to hint/update him that people should deserve their time at least when in a presentation

But you had your time - sorry to say it but you chose to use some of your time to answer this person's questions. If I'm understanding the question correctly you still got your 2 hour slot. Your manager can't exactly hop in a nearby time machine and go back and change history. If asking questions mid-presentation was explicitly forbidden they (or you) would have said something at the time so they can't exactly belatedly punish someone in retrospect for something that they were allowed to do just because you want them to.