Getting ready for your presentation

WANT to ace a presentation? Check out these tips.

Figure out your timing

Nervous speakers often race through slides but when your audience is learning, you need to give them time to absorb what you’re saying. A rule of thumb is to allow one slide per 90 seconds of talking. So if you’re talking for 15 minutes, you’ll need 10 slides.

Hand out your slides

Start by telling people they don’t need to take notes because you’re making your slides available. Email them or put them up on your blog. Now your audience can concentrate on what you’re saying.

Prepare a great show

Fancy transitions and lots of colour images don’t mean much if you’re stumbling and stammering. Research your subject and read wider than you have to. That way, you can speak with confidence.

Don’t leave loose ends

Every story has a start, middle and end. Your talk should follow this. Introduce your subject, talk and then present them with a conclusion. If it’s a very academic talk, have an extra slide with references. You don’t present these but when people need to check your sources, they’ll be handy.

Practise

Stand up at home and give a presentation to the cat or dog. Then fix any bits that didn’t work or were too slow or too fast.

Do an equipment check

Turn up early and run through everything so that if you need an extra cable or something doesn’t work, you can deal with it without your audience becoming bored while waiting.

Adapt

While you’re talking, you’ll see if people are yawning, twitching or looking blank. As you’re prepared, you’ll have time to adjust your pace to your audience. Speed up slightly if they’re bored and slow down if they need to catch up.

Say thanks

You want these people to be invested, so thank them for coming at the start and thank them for listening at the end. Politeness will earn you brownie points.