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Presentation Insights

This document provides tips for giving effective presentations. It recommends starting and ending on time, engaging the audience through eye contact, humor, and personal stories, keeping slides simple with a logical flow, maintaining a professional appearance and rehearsing thoroughly. The key points are to engage the audience, keep slides clear and concise, and practice your delivery.

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Isabella Ghement
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40 views

Presentation Insights

This document provides tips for giving effective presentations. It recommends starting and ending on time, engaging the audience through eye contact, humor, and personal stories, keeping slides simple with a logical flow, maintaining a professional appearance and rehearsing thoroughly. The key points are to engage the audience, keep slides clear and concise, and practice your delivery.

Uploaded by

Isabella Ghement
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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COMM 581 1 December, 2010

Presentation Insights
Timing

 Start and end on time


 State from the onset whether you will take questions during the presentation or only at the end
 Control interruptions from the audience (e.g.: “That is an excellent question and I will address it at the
end”)

Engaging the audience

 Smile at the audience throughout your presentation


 Make eye contact with all the people in the room
 Start the presentation by saying something funny
 Start the presentation by showing a cartoon that will make people laugh or a picture that will draw
people into your story
 Tell the audience a personal story that will help them relate to the topic
 Ask questions at the beginning or during the presentation (e.g., “How many of you have heard about
this?”, “Is there anyone here who faced this particular problem?”, “Would anyone like to tell us how
this might work?”)
 If possible, show or explain to the audience members how they may benefit from the results of your
work (i.e., “What’s in it for me?”)

Slides

 Keep your slides as simple as possible but not any simpler. Remember that less is more!
 Make sure the slides follow a logical flow that is easy to digest.
 Refrain from mixing a variety of information on the slides (e.g., show exploratory data analysis results
on one slide and model fitting results on another slide).
 Are your graphs large enough to be legible by the people sitting at the back of the room? If not, show
each graph on a separate slide rather than showing several graphs on the same slide.
 Use schematic diagrams to convey difficult concepts or to display the workflow for a given thought
process.
 How technical does each slide need to be? The answer depends on your audience and the scope of the
talk. When in doubt, keep things as non-technical as possible.

Body Language

 Be calm and assertive


 Pause for a few seconds to catch your breath if you need to
 Keep hands out of pockets
 Do not apologize during the presentation (e.g., “I’m sorry that this doesn’t work”) as this is typically
seen as something negative

1
Dress Code

 Dress professionally
 Do not wear perfume

Delivery

 The best presentation is a rehearsed presentation! Make sure you rehearse your presentation several
times until you feel fully comfortable with presenting every single slide. You want to be able to talk
about each slide without pausing to find your words or having to rephrase what you need to say
several times before getting it right.
 Don’t speak too fast or too slow! Try to find a pace that is right for most people in the audience.
 If your presentation is long, try to remind the audience what question(s) you are addressing from time
to time. It’s good to have mini-recaps along the way.
 Try to focus on why it is important to talk about a certain topic and what the implications of your
findings are. Minimize the amount of time you spend describing how you got these results.

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