Don’t be late
Arrive half an hour before to set up the room, find the projector, bla bla bla.
In fact, I suggest 45 minutes. Murphy’s Law and all that.
Projector/NetMeeting WHATEVER may not work
Therefore, you need a backup.
Either, you have saved paper and emailed a copy to everyone attending, or you have printed out double-sided, 2 slides on each page copies for every 2 attendees so they can follow along.
Nothing is more irritating than not being able to follow along with some sort of visual cue.
Honestly, technology sometimes just doesn’t work, boot up in time, power on, or want to work properly.
Have a backup.
Set the time and mean it
An hour means an hour. No more, and certainly less if possible.
For me, presentations should run at 15 minutes to half an hour, maximum.
Don’t bore people with details
Depending on the complexity, you either need to break it up into many little presentations, or the presentation is just a general overview of the whole situation and therefore can be brief with relevant points.
If people want details, they’ll ask questions. Don’t bore them with minute details.
Each slide you present…
- should have a point
- should be in a large font to be able to be seen from the back of the room
- should not be cluttered
- …but not be boring with just black and white
- should have more images than words
If you put a lot of text on a slide, people will focus on reading the content instead of listening.
Don’t give them that distraction.
After the meeting
Send out a summary email or a copy of the presentation if you haven’t already, with 3 – 5 points or key actions highlighted.
Don’t get wordy.
And make sure that your email signature has your name, title, email address and telephone number in case people have questions, or at least tells them WHO they should talk to in case they have questions.
Oh, and know your stuff
Don’t read off the slide word for word. They know what’s on the slide.
I’m not saying you should memorize everything, and you can glance occasionally but if you know your content and the key points inside out, you will ace that presentation.
If you memorized 5 pages word for word, you are going to crash and burn because you’ll get thrown off if you forget something.
Use your slides as mental cues of what to talk about.
They want more details.. NOW
If they want to know more details and you don’t have the answer, tell them you’ll make a note of it (cue making a note), and you’ll email them with the proper answer after the meeting.
If you have to, fend them off with a vague answer and you’ll email them with the proper answer after the meeting or once y’all reach a decision.
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in my grad school program, they made a presentation skills class mandatory–you had to take it once per year. Which means that I took it 4 times! They went over good/bad color combos, how to reduce fidgeting, font sizes and types, number of words per slide, projecting your voice, making the presentation relate-able, etc. Then everyone in the class had to do a 15 minute presentation and the rest of the class graded us on it. by the time I defended my master's degree and had to speak for an hour about my project, I was old-hat at it. I'm so glad they made us do that.
I was fortunate enough (I believe) to attend a presentation given by Edward Tufte in 2007. He is KILLER when it comes to ppt. http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
I think too many bells and whistles (forget annoying animations) detract from the presentation. While I agree that there shouldn't be too much content on the slide, I also don't think there should be much more THAN the necessary content. That is, minimalist is better. IF the image is is tightly connected to the content and really is necessary, then I think it's great. I'm sure we've all been held captive (and not in a good way) by long, wordy, overly animated/graphicicized (just coined that) ppt presentations 🙂
Great point!
Good tips. A lively presentation is much more interesting (and easier to remember) than a stuffy one where the presenter is as exciting as a dead fish. Thanks for sharing!
I have been to more than my share of presenters who could benefit from the wonderful tips you have just posted above. The worst was a woman who stated she had 17 points to discuss. When 20 minutes had gone by and she was on point 2 – section d)….. I was frantically wishing I could get paged out of there.
One presentation tip I love is to plant questions in the audience. If there are people in the audience that are friends, "assign" them questions to ask you when question time comes, and have really good answers prepared. Sneaky sneaky! 🙂