Presentation Tips

Presentations can be tough, especially if you don't know your audience, haven't prepared, or are simply nervous. This post has came about because whilst i've been at University, I have taken part in several presentations and have picked up a fair amount of valuable information which I want to share so that you can have 3 years worth of experience handed over to you in a page worth of text.

The 3 P's: Prepare, prepare, prepare. It's no good thinking you can 'wing it'. A presentation requires you to know your subject and to articulate your thoughts into understandable sentences which capture the imagination of the audience and don't send them to sleep. Preparation doesn't stop there, though; in fact, preparation includes knowing your environment and audience.

At the time of writing, I have not long come out of a presentation which could have landed me with a job - so yes, this was an important presentation. I made a mistake by not knowing the environment I was presenting in. My laptop was set up with a powerpoint and two virtual machines - which I would be using for a live demonstration. Unbeknownst to me, the environment didn't support HDMI and I ended up having to remotely log into my laptop, which completely threw me off track and despite trying to regain composure, I didn't feel as if it worked. All this could have been avoided by knowing the environment and testing it prior to the presentation.

Know your audience. Are your audience technical? Are they non-technical? It's important to gage how well your audience understand the subject area, as this lets you know how technical you can afford to be. Now for some brief points you should think about before you go and do your presentation:

• Have Eye Contact - Too many people avoid looking at the audience. I too have been guilty of it in the past. Whilst it may not be appropriate to glare at one of your guests all the way through, look at them, talk to them, it helps to invite them into your conversation.
• Slow down! - I found that alot of people tend to talk fast, which may be due to nerves, but it's quite important to go at a slow and steady pace, rather than quick and risk losing your audience.
• Know Your Speech - I always try my best to know what i'm going to say. I know lots of friends who use notes or write notes under their presentations - I've got nothing against it, but I don't like to try and memorize a set of notes too much, or the presentation risks looking a little un-natural and becoming robot-like. Have an idea what to say, but don't stick to the script TOO much.
•  Have A Backup Plan! - After tonight's experience, I will never again go to a presentation without a solid backup plan. If something goes wrong, you need to have a plan. This could be having your powerpoint on 2x USB sticks, just incase one is lost, corrupt etc. In my case, I needed a pre-recorded video of my 'live-demo' so that I could have showed the audience my software if any technical issues meant that I couldn't hook up my laptop.

I don't proclaim to be perfect at presentations - far from it. I like doing presentations because I feel like there's alot to learn from each one. Each presentation offers a slightly new scenario and new challenges. These tips are just as much for you as they are for me. I will most certainly use these myself whenever I have a presentation in the future.

Remember one thing you should always do, without fail....enjoy your presentation!

Thanks for reading.