THESTOP BREAKING

BASIC OFPRESENTING!

RULES

With your angry Drill Sergeant @theREALwikiman

It’s so easy to avoid obvious mistakes when presenting.

After all, the audience is on your side. So make it worth their while!

THEFACEFRONT!

First of all,

For God’s sake, stop turning to face the big screen! You have a computer right in front of you – you know, the one you’re using to move your presentation materials along – so look at that instead, okay? That way people can actually HEAR you.

ARE YOU FREAKING You’re reading it out,

KIDDINGME?!

Don’t even get me started on this. Written prose has different phraseology, different tones, different nuances, different EVERYTHING from stuff you say out loud. If you’re reading your presentation out, IT IS AWFUL.

READING OUTAND STOP

AS WELL.THE SLIDES

Slides should support what you’re saying, not duplicate it – and they certainly shouldn’t be there to provide a surrogate for good content.

SEVERALDID THAT SLIDE HAVE

ON?BULLET POINTS

•Oh by the way

•Oh by the way•The late nineties called.

•Oh by the way•The late nineties called.• THEY WANT THEIR SUCKY PRESENTATION BACK.

•Oh by the way•The late nineties called.• THEY WANT THEIR SUCKY PRESENTATION BACK.•Oh, and they said – don’t worry about recording that episode of Friends on your VHS player.

•Oh by the way•The late nineties called.• THEY WANT THEIR SUCKY PRESENTATION BACK.•Oh, and they said – don’t worry about recording that episode of Friends on your VHS player. •It’ll probably be repeated at some point.

YOUR STOP USING

AS ACO-PRESENTER

CRUTCH!

Co-presenters, you DO NOT NEED to look at each other for support and encouragement! If you’re up on stage, own the stage, and talk to your fricking audience.

YOUR FINISH

THOUGHTS.

Either say something, or don’t. None of this “yeah so basically, again… yeah” rubbish. Have you even practiced this talk?

UM.STOP SAYING

Or ‘like’ or ‘sort of’ or ‘er’ – all you are doing is RUINING THE IMPACT OF YOUR WORDS. Have faith in what you’re saying.

APOLOGISING!STOP

If the audience didn’t know there was supposed to be a video there but it didn’t play, why bore them with your superfluous apology? MOVE ON.

JUST DID YOU

OF THEWALK IN FRONT

PROJECTOR?

Seriously?

CANNOT BELIEVE I LITERALLY

YOU JUST WENT

OVERYOUR TIME LIMIT...

The arrogance! The conceit! The ill-preparedness! The disrespect to the event and to the other presenters!

Either make a presentation you can deliver within the allotted time, or say no to the invitation to speak...

Okay, that’s it.

Good luck with your presentations!

PRESENTATION BY NED POTTER

Click to view the background image (by Nasos3) on Flickr

CLICK FOR MORE STUFF AT THEWIKIMAN.ORG

Ned Potter, aka thewikiman, is a writer (if he ever finishes his book), a speaker (there are no guarantees he will obey all the rules in this presentation, but he will at least try) and above all, A LIBRARIAN.