Thursday, May 28, 2009


I've decided to write a guide to presentations. Mostly to remind myself of things I need to look out for when making presentations, but I'm sure it'll be helpful to those of you who are reading this too, especially since uni needs you to do a lot of them!

1. Keep it short and simple.

Even if all your sentences are gramatically correct, people aren't interested in sitting there for 15 minutes and reading off your slides. Your job is to interpret your topic and present the facts to people - not splashing it all over your presentation and hoping your audience will magically absorb the facts. If your presentation took less than an hour to do, you probably need to give it a second look. Keep your points short, and write notecards to remind yourself of extra information that you can talk about to keep your audience interested.

2. Pictures.

I cannot even stress how important pictures are in powerpoint presentations. The whole point of a powerpoint (pun unintended) is to provide visual backup for the information that you are going to present. It helps the audience absorb the information better. Putting large blocks of text in your powerpoint is not going to help the audience absorb the information.

Your pictures don't even need to have more than a cursory reference to what you're talking about. There just needs to be something for the audience to look at, to keep them interested, while you're talking. At minimum, each powerpoint slide should have AT LEAST one picture in it. I'd lose interest really quickly if the presenter's powerpoint was full of text and nothing but text, no matter how detailed her presentation, and I'm sure you would too.

3. Colours.

Honestly, people. Why on earth would you choose a GREY background for your powerpoint? The whole idea is to attract the attention of your audience - an all-grey background is hardly stimulating to the senses. Don't be afraid to use your creativity and use lots of colours - if, like me, you lack the creative skills to do so, just go download some interesting free powerpoint templates. They're a dime a dozen, and it's not hard to get some really good ones.

4. Confidence.

This part, I still have trouble with. My heart rate still speeds up before a presentation, my voice still trembles and stutters, I still get flustered and forget half of what I wanted to say. But I can say that with each presentation, it gets better - at least now you know your weak points, and you can try to rectify them. For my nervousness I try to concentrate on my breathing before my turn, it helps a little bit but I eventually get nervous again anyway. :P Just remember that everyone had to go through this at some point or other. Concentrate on giving them the facts and presenting it in a way that you would want to listen to.

This is another good reason for making your slides as colourful and picture-filled as you can - it takes more pressure off you and focuses the attention of the audience onto the slides.

I hope these tips were helpful! They certainly do help me a lot in my presentations.