Presentations

Lately I’ve had to sit through several presentations during my English classes at university. Fair enough I’ll have to prepare and hold my own next week. I’ll come to that. But I’m getting off topic, back to the presentations which I’ve already seen: You know what? Bad things stant out more. They get easily recognized. Sometimes it’s kinda hard to avoid doing all those pesky mistakes when giving presentations. I’ll try to avoid some of them. But what is it that’s disturbing me that much? Well…

• Don’t f***ing remind me every second that you’ve said something before. I swear the next time a presentation contains more than one “As I’ve already said before” I’m gonna hurt somebody.
• This is NOT a reading exercise. This is supposedly a presentation. Act like you know this fact.
• There’s absolutely NO need to fill in “yeah” or “and” when you don’t know what to say. If you HAVE to fill in something, try stretching a “well” while you’re looking for your path.
• Test your equipment. Test your software. Make sure to use backwards-compatible files when presenting in dubious environments (this is especially true for 3rd party devices and/or operating systems) (OpenOffice.org 2.x @ university)
• Your presentation “comes to an end”. YOU do NOT. (“I’ve come to my end”)
• If you can, bring your own system (not including the projector). Saves the hassle of unwanted popups, the need for removable media and file-compatibility issues. (Apple Quicktime Update Popup @ university DURING PowerPoint presentation)
• If you want media, fine then, HAVE media! Though the flow of your presentation WILL suffer when you have to jump out of the slides during the presentation to show a video. Try to embed media or show them at the start/end of your presentation.
• If you want to be nice, use a roadmap. That gives the interested listener an overview of what to expect and the bored people a plan how long they have to endure you.