Giving An Effective Presentation

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Giving An Effective Presentation

• Presentation matters. You have done the work and
  now it is time to tell everyone what you have
  done. So you owe yourself and your audience a
  good presentation. If you dont properly prepare
  your presentation, you are doing yourself and
  your audience a disservice. A good work and a
  good report do not make up for a bad
  presentation. Prepare for it.

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Guidelines that work

• Positioning your presentation
• Use active title
• Have focus for your presentation
• Use proper structure
• Determine proper timing
• Give insights
• Think about audience attention
• Use visual aids
• Make it relevant
• Make is useful
• Else

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Position your presentation

• Ask yourself what kind of presentation you would
  expect if you were in the audience.
• Make your talk applicable to their work.
• Establish a frame of reference for your audience
  explain some of the peculiarities of your work.
• Treat your subject broad enough to cover the
  range of interests of attendees.
• Remember the title of your presentation or your
  paper.

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Use active title

• Use active titles for your slides.
• Title must give the reason for a given slide.
• A good title provides visual reinforcement for
  what you say.
• Use words that relate to your topic and are
  familiar for most attendees.
• Avoid ambiguity.

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Have focus for your presentation

• You may have spend a long time doing the work and
  writing your report. You should not expect your
  audience to absorb and understand every detail of
  your work.
• This does not mean you should not be proud of
  your work or underestimate your work. It means
  dont get carried away.
• Too many details in a short period of time will
  bore your audience.
• Stay close to the core of your topic.
• Summarize.

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Use proper structure

• A well structured presentation is pleasing to the
  average listener.
• Ask yourself how difficult it would be if
  someone with little to no knowledge about your
  topic were to describe your presentation and its
  value.
• If an average attendee were to summarize your
  presentation, what would s/he say? What would be
  the key statements or headlines?

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Determine proper timing

• List major points you intent to cover.
• Allocate time spent on each topic relative to its
  importance.
• One approach would be to break down your
  presentation into several sections and divide the
  entire time accordingly.
• Space your slides evenly over time, let ideas
  sink in. Dont rush through.
• Dont strain the attention span of your audience
  by staying long over one slide consider making
  multiple slides.

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Give Insights

• Qualitative insights are more important than
  quantitative results. Your report should contain
  details.
• Give summary results backed up by graphs and
  illustrative details.
• Comparative analysis are easier to relate to
  based on these data, we found that approach A
  was twice as effective as approach B for distance
  learning.
• Avoid jargon.

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Think of audience attention

• Audience interest level is highest at the
  beginning and the end of presentation.
• Good introduction and good summary of conclusions
  are very important.
• A good introduction persuades your audience to
  continue listening. That is when your audience
  will size you up.
• A good conclusion will leave your audience with
  something to remember.

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Think of audience attention

• There is a well tested formula for giving a good
  presentation
• Tell them what youre going to tell them.
• Tell them
• Tell them what you told them
• No matter how good your presentation is, your
  audience attention will diminish somewhat during
  the body of your talk.
• As soon as you mention in conclusion you get
  their attention. Use it.

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Use visual aids

• Sight and sound are the two senses that your
  audience will have to absorb your presentation.
  Other senses wont come into play.
• Give equal importance to visual aids.
• Here is a test go through your slides and see
  whether
• your slides are meaningful without words
• your words are meaningful without visual aids.
• If the answer to both is yes then make sure they
  are properly coordinated.

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Make it relevant

• Have a good reason for showing each and every
  slide you use.
• Ask yourself Why am I showing this slide?
• Ask yourself whether the slide accomplishes what
  you want.
• Dont combine results of little or no value with
  those that have key values. It will diminish the
  significance of your key findings.
• If in doubt, use some sort of priority scale.

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Make it useful

• Make sure your slides are readable.
• Make sure your slides are easy to understand.
• Enlarging some prints such as computer print out
  may not solve the problem.
• Avoid including too much information on a single
  slide.
• Use similarities with, and differences from,
  ideas with which the audience can relate to.
• Relate your work and results to findings of
  others.

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Else

• Dont read your slides and dont memorize.
• Rehearse for presentation length and spacing of
  slides.
• Rehearsing too much may take away spontaneity
  making your talk boring. Memorizing does the
  same.
• There is difference between presentation and
  speech or oration. Presentation is like a talk
  with your audience.
• It is normal to be a little nervous. Practice to
  improve the situation.

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Else

• Dont give excuses
• I know that you probably cannot read all the
  data on this slide, but
• You are telling them that fixing that problem was
  not important for you and that you do not care.
• Excuses will turn off your audience (rightfully).
• Take time to prepare an excuse-free presentation.

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