stop breaking the basic rules of presenting
DESCRIPTION
Blog post at http://bit.ly/hGhaFK. Some people are confident public speakers, other people get nervous. Either way, you still see a lot of people breaking the most basic rules of presenting, and those presentations would be a lot better if they didn't.TRANSCRIPT
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.