I don’t often do a direct re:post of another blog, Twitter and Google Reader make it too easy to just share the link. But here’s a great post by Nicholas Bate worth sharing whether you’re on Twitter on not.
It never amazes me how so many presentations fail to meet the bar. The latest classic trap appears to be using stunning graphics without content. A beautiful design makes a good presentation stick in your memory. It does not improve a poor one. With a bad presentation, at most people might remember it had pretty background images.
So here’s some simple tips to deliver a great presentation. It would be rude to re-print the list because there would be nothing left to link to. So here’s the first two tips:
- Start on time. Whatever.
- Finish on time. Whatever.
Click here to read the rest.
I was only going to print the first tip, but the second is equally important if not more so. If you are not the last presenter of the day it is rude to take up the next person’s time, treating their presentation as less important and less worthy of the audience’s time than yours. And if you are the last presenter of a long day, chances are you’ve lost the audience 30 minutes before the end anyway. Deliver a short compelling speech and allow plenty of time for questions. If still engaged, you’ll finish the day with a great discussion. At the very least, you’ll have a grateful audience leaving on time.
Most people, when forcibly told they have 2 minutes left try speaking really really fast to get through the 20 slides they still want to present. Fail! Nobody will remember a single one of them. (And I confess to making this mistake delivering a TechEd presentation a few years ago, lesson learned via the feedback forms.) If you are running late with your presentation, wrap it up with a short summary rather than rattling off the remaining slides you don’t have time to present properly.
Reference:
- The Simple Stuff of Great Presentations by Nicholas Bate
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