Yikes! Have To Make A Presentation?

Sometime during your college or professional years, you will deliver a presentation. Your audience may range from few to hundreds or even thousands of people. You may be the greatest speaker in the world, but if your words do not reach to the audience or if your documents are fuzzy, you may as well be from another planet. Before you deliver your presentation, understand the 3Ps. Planning, Planning and Planning. Following are some pointers that will help you in presenting.

Subject: Make sure you clearly understand what you are supposed to deliver. Make no assumptions. If you are asked to discuss results of widget sales in the United States for last year, you don’t want to focus on how to make widgets. If your focus is on African American writers, your focus should NOT be anything but that!

Length: Have a clear idea of how long your presentation will be? Most people don’t like to sit for an hour of reading from a PowerPoint and they lose interest after lunch. Remember the KISS rules: Keep It Simple Silly and Keep It Short Silly!

Audience: Know your audience. Is it comprised of people who have some knowledge of your subject or people who have no idea at all about it? You will need to sprinkle some information to cover both of these groups.

Research: Like the papers you write for college, research for your presentation the same way. Get facts and figures and recheck them for accuracy. Cite anything that you used for your research, and give credit where it is due.

Content: Everything you discover will not be part of your presentation. At this stage however, put all useful data from your research on a word document divided by two columns. Label them: 'Nice to Have' and 'Need to Have'. Put all information in order of importance to your audience in these columns. The first five or six 'Need to Haves' will form the basis of your presentation. The 'Nice to Haves' will provide some interesting accents to make your presentation stand out.

Index (3x5 ) cards are your friends! Transfer each 'Need to Have' item to its own index card. NUMBER the cards. If they fall on the floor, numbering will ensure that you can pick them in the correct order. Put a few bullet points of information in support of the main theme on the card as well. Also, to keep a track of the 'Need to have' items, it is recommended to put them on the same type of card but in a different color so you know which is which. CAUTION!Index cards are helpful for reference but avoid reading from them directly.

Handouts: Prepare handouts that your audience can take with them. Include where they can get more information on your topic. Again, document where you got the information.

Your presentation: This is the final step where you put all of the information together. Once done, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse...in front of a mirror, friends, family. Use this safe environment to pace yourself, make corrections and perfect your work.

 Hope these pointers help you put together an interesting presentation!  

Have a great day! 

(c) Pamela Tyree Griffin

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