Never, ever, put up a slide and then read verbatim from it. I would go so far as to say that the slide and the commentary should each carry information not found in the other.

The best presentations I have ever seen were where the slides and the commentary were both precise and complete messages in themselves. They are linked, of course, but one should not be a transcript of the other.

I am a pastor, so I make a presentation at least weekly in addition to teaching anywhere between one to three classes a week. Here are my suggestions:

• Know your material well enough to not need any notes.
• Look at the faces of the people you are speaking to. If this is hard, look in between their faces.
• Never look down or look at notes after asking a rhetorical question. Look at your audience and wait a couple of seconds. This little trick helps an audience feel as though they were personally asked the question.
• Speak conversationally as though you were only talking to one person, but speak loud enough and annunciate well enough so that people can understand you. If not, they tune you out. (I subscribe to your podcast, Merlin, and this won’t be a problem for you).
• Don’t talk to fast. Look like you are enjoying yourself. No one will ever feel better about a presentation than the person giving it.

Good luck. I hope this helps. 43F has been a huge help to me.

As an aside, I’d love to see you write about Tinderbox or post some good links. I’ve made a couple of separate trips through their website and while Tinderbox looks interesting, I still can’t figure out what it does.

As for presentations, the job I held as a student mostly involved videotaping classes and presentations. One of the most widespread presentation topics was how to give a presentation. Quality of these varied widely. The best were in the Haas School of Business.

The bedrock essential the Haas people stressed was knowing your material backwards and forwards. Stop thinking about how you stand, what your hands are doing, and even whether or not you say “um.” Know your shit backwards and forwards— not just the presentation itself, but the background. And get a good night’s sleep.

Edward Tufte’s presentation advice is also most excellent. If you Google around you can find various versions of it. Here is one transcription: http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/presentations.html

Seth Godin wrote the book on effective powerpoint presentations:

http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf

Tremendous discipline required to follow all the rules, but if you’re looking for a giddy audience, you just might find the fu in that document.

There’s a very good discussion over at EdwardTufte.com about How to make presentations that I like to mine for ideas. It’s long — the moderated conversation started in 2001 and continues today — so it may not be terribly helpful for tomorrow, but I have found it to be a worthwhile investment of my time.

Simple, yet effective:

1. Tell them what you’re going to say.
2. Tell them.
3. Tell them what you told them.

I see perhaps a hundred or more powerpoints a year, and you’d be surprised how few people do this.

Always be way over-prepared.

Here’s a great post at Presentation Zen comparing the presentation techniques of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/the_zen_estheti.html

Practice. Practice with audience. Practice again.

You’ll be surprised what you’ll find…

I repeat what St1 says.

If you keep practicing presentation, until it becomes routine (obviously a bit late for long-term habit building on that), then when you do it for real it’s just another practice session.

Stand up and physically say the words of your talk, all the words, out loud, to an empty room, at least once before you give the talk for real.

It’s a way of forcing your face to make the words you want to speak in public, making you rehearsing the key sentences and alerting youself to necessary timing for delivering jokes.

Make the mistakes behind closed doors and then, if possible, sleep on it to let your subconcious chew through the new experience. you’ll awake with newfound public-speaking reserves and, often, better jokes.

Never disclaim yourself unless you have a good out. For example “Hey, I don’t know too much about this… but I know Brett in the audience can totally tell you anything you need to know, so Brett, stand up and tell us exactly how to cook the kittens to make them extra delicious!” is fine, but “uhhm… sorry, I’m not entirely sure what this whole part of the softare is about, but I’m sure it’s really useful if you, uh, have a use for it.” is not.

Also, if Brett won’t stand up and talk, he’s the loser for not doing so, and you’re not a loser for not knowing anything about extra spicey kittens.

The above is all great advice- reminds of the four Bs: -be prepared -be clear -be funny -be gone!

Powerpoint/keynote/slides/etc. work best if they are background brain candy. I try to think of them as the rhythm section for my solo. You are the font man, tey are the band/orchestra/cast. The slides carry the pace and provide texture; you tell the story. The slides need to contain the “hook,” but the audience should remember how great the solo was.

Sorry I can’t be there, have fun!

Avoid words like “defenestrate” at all costs.

Show, don’t tell.

If you’re trying to make a point, don’t try to make a from-first-principles argument. Present some examples that make it obvious what you’re trying to say.

Then, reinforce that with a single slide that sums up your point in five words or fewer.

Also see Dave Gray’s summary of Jeff Veen’s 7 Steps to a Better Presentation (and follow the link to the original post, of course).

You’ve received some great advice so far, Merlin, but I have to confess my surprise that the single most valuable tip for any public presenter has not yet been put forward.

I refer, of course, to the essential practice of the late Andy Kaufman, guaranteed to ensure the focus of any crowd. Had you done this at ETech, you would have felt no fear of walking near open windows.

Bring cookies and milk.

One of the earlier Tufte links was 403; here’s one that will work:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040428012940/http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/ajb/hci/tufte.html

I design other people’s PowerPoint presentations, and I have seen DREADFUL abuses of this one rule:

Each slide should ‘say’ one thing.

A few bullet points are fine if they are cleverly done and attractive, but too many get scattered and make you look like you’re not confident. Which, as all of us who know you via site, board and podcast know, you are n-o-t.

From a presenter standpoint, the things that helped me most in my 12+ years of pitching as a copywriter are:

1. Practice, practice, practice.
2. Streamline.
3. Practice again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The more you are ‘off-book’, as we say in the acting biz, the more freedom and fun you will have as you present. And that’s what sells the presentation.

The next presentation I see where the presenter READS OFF THE SLIDE, I swear to God, I’m gonna run up on stage and kick that presenter square in the balls.

You laugh, but I see it happen all the time.

Hint: your audience knows how to read. Fill in all the stuff that’s NOT on the slide.

Lot’s of good advice above.

I too am a big fan of Jeff Veen’s speaking style. You know why? Because it doesn’t feel like a presentation. It feels like a conversation or a narrative. I think an interesting variation of asking the question that you asked is this. Tell me what you as an audience member appreciate in a presentation (as opposed to asking presenters for presenting tips).

1- Think of it as a story, not a presentation. 2- Instead of bulleted Powerpoint or Keynote slides, consider diagrams, interactive demos or photos. 3- Consider not using slides at all. One of the best presentations I recently watched at DUX 2005 involved no slides, but tools and utensils to demonstrate how Indians made coffee. She then continued to draw analogies of the cultural significance of Coffee to other person to person and computer to person relationships. It made me want to read her paper. 4- Know who you’re talking to and their level of expertise. 5- Don’t wait till the end to answer questions. It kind of makes it feel like you’re just powering through to get to the end. Also, this makes it feel more like a dialog than a monolog. 6- I reiterate what others have said. Know your shit. Backward and forward/ up and down. 7- Relax. Well, at least try. A shot of scotch ten minutes before might help. Unless, of course, you’re an alcoholic. Don’t take it so seriously. Audiences can sense stress. 8- Always give them something to walk away with (Tufte) 9- Arrive 15 minutes before (Tufte) 10-Finish before you’re supposed to (Tufte) 11- Others here have said practice, practice practice. I think that that’s a little less important than just knowing your shit. Truly knowing your shit will prevent others from thinking you’re full of it. In lieu of practicing in an empty room, I usually stare at each slide, and go through my notecards to cement it in my head. If I need help with the actually delivery, I usually just talk to myself in the car and record it in my voice recorder. I then listen to that over and over.

The key thing is that everyone is different. Different things work for different people. In fact, I’d be interested in how much prepartion Jeff goes though because it always looks like it’s flying out of his head. Like butter.

These are the basics and if you follow these rules you will be OK (provided you know your subject).

15 minutes - 20 minutes maximum.

Tell them what your going to tell them.

Tell them - Maximum of 5 key points & don’t waffle.

Tell them what you told them.

Take questions or get out of ‘Dodge fast’ depending on the subject / audience / response relationaship.

Yrs Clembo

Tell me a story.

My interest is held if I can follow a narrative thread: What are you doing? Why was it important to you to do that? What false paths did you go down? How did you finally make it good?

I won’t be able to attend the Weekend this time (it pains my very heart and soul!), so I hope you’ll make copious notes available in the Corresponding packet.

Break a leg!

Figure out the last thing you will say and memorize it. This is the cure to finishing you fantastic presentation by looking dazed and saying “Um, ok, thanks. I’m done now.” (Real life story I’m afraid)

Plan to actually get through 75 percent of what you wanted to say, so cut beforehand and end up covering everything. I hate presenters who whip through the last three slides like a train wreck because they have three minutes left. I guess it comes back to “practice!” Or is that “Plastics!”

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22takahashi+method

Don’t tell them you are nervous; no one cares or is paying enough attention (in the beginning) to notice. I always did this because I thought it would help me relax. It didn’t.

Also, move your body, hands or something. It will help get the blood flowing and get you sounding excited and soon you will be excited.

If you are passing anything out don’t let them read it until you are done and make different handouts in different colors.

It sounds like if you know your shit you’re golden.

I’ve given hundreds of presentations of all kinds, and in addition to the other good points already made, I’ve learned:

1. For many presentations, people do not remember WHAT you said as much as they remember how they FELT in your presentation.

Think about the last presentation you were at — you probably remember AT MOST a few “memorable phrases” or ideas from what they said, but you almost certainly DO remember whether you thought they knew what they were talking about or if you thought they were blowing smoke.

More important, 6 months from now they definitely will NOT remember what you said, but hopefully will remember that you knew what you were talking about and pick up the phone to call you.

Thus, I learned that the #1 thing to bring to my presentations is upbeat ENTHUSIASM. Not fake, gushy, perky crap, but honest “hey, I think this is interesting and I’d like to share it with you” kind of enthusiasm. If you can’t muster that — I’d suggest you shouldn’t be doing the presentation…

1. If doing technical presentations, beware the twit in the front row who wants to prove to your audience how smart HE is by picking nits in your presentation. I learned to start by saying “BTW, there are 5 little errors in my presentation — see if you can catch them all.” Then when Mr Pocket Protector stuck up his hand to point out the error of my ways, I would just say “Yep, that’s one of them…!” and MOVE ON.

2. Right up there with wanting to yell out “Hey! I can read” to idiots turning around to read their slides to me, is a special point about WEBINARS —- even though people can’t see you via the phone, they can still tell when you’re READING a script!! (Don’t believe me? Call up a friend and do a test yourself to see if they can tell when you switch from “reading” to “talking”)

Do NOT write a word-for-word script. If you MUST have something as a reminder, write one or two word reminders.

My 1.68 cents (= 2 cents Cdn) worth…

Lew

Most of the key points have been hit here, so I won’t go over them. However, I’ve yet to see what I consider to be the most important bit (though Lew S. came close): Give a damn.

Seriously, if you don’t seem to care about what you’re talking about, then I sure as hell won’t care, no matter how Tufte-ian your slides may be (although I’m of the opinion that Tufte is horrifically overrated anyway). And if you really do seem to care about what you’re talking about, I’m going to be much more willing to put up with any poor slides, rambling, and stuttering you might bring to the show.

Prep your note cards carefully. I use 3x5 cards with just a few keywords on them so I can glance down and pick up a key point. I also use very few cards. If I had a three minute talk, I might use just one card with four words on it. Emphasize whats important and necessary for the audience to understand. You know way more than your audience, so pull the key bits out for them. Practice before hand, especially any phrases that might be hard to say. Avoid cliches. Slow down your speech so you don’t run through the material to fast. If you have a joke, slow down on that so your audience has time to laugh. Don’t use powerpoint as a crutch (How about, don’t use powerpoint!). Please, please practice.