Guidelines for Presentations

1.      Begin your presentation with a very brief (1 slide) overview of what you are going to say, the focus of the talk.

2.      Do not read your presentation. This is the Number One Rule of Successful Presentations. Reading inflicts unspeakable boredom on the audience. Some people do prefer to write a possible full text of a presentation in advance.  If this helps you, by all means do it. However, when you actually deliver the talk, you should have only an outline in front of you. The outline should be detailed enough to remind you of what you want to say, but not so detailed that you can read from it.  This will allow you to maintain eye contact with your audience. Audiences crave eye contact and lose interest when they do not receive it.

3.      Don’t just read every word on the slides. Do not have every word you will say on the PowerPoint.  Put the “headers”, key concepts, key information, key graphs, etc on the PowerPoint and fill in the information during your talk.

4.      Avoid “um” or all of its relatives; e.g. “like,” “okay,” “you know,” “I mean,” etc. If you lose your place, or lose your train of thought, or cannot find the word you seek, try to remain silent until you recover. Your audience will not notice the pause!  Try not to fill the “empty space” with “um.” This is easier said that done, since in everyday conversation many people use these words `like all the time;’

5.      Try to use motion in the PowerPoint.

6.      Think and rethink the order of the slides in your presentation.

7.      Think of logical questions an audience member might ask about each slide and try to have information relevant to these questions in your brain or on note cards. 

8.      Do not make your presentation too long. Do not include too many slides.

9.      Practice your presentation so you know how long it is. 

10.  Reread the PowerPoint slides and your notes many times before your talk so you are familiar with the material.  However, you do not need to memorize it.  If you memorize, you can forget.  If you know the material, you are simple explaining it to us. The slides are your outline.  Simply explain what they say.

11.  Try not to talk to fast.

12.  Don’t worry about being nervous. This is entirely normal. So is losing your place. It is perfectly acceptable to stop speaking for a few seconds while you recover and look at your outline.  Most of the time, your audience will not be aware why you paused. 

13.  Allow appropriate time for questions after each presentation. Be prepared for questions but if you don’t know the answer to a particular question, just reply, “That’s an excellent question. I don’t know the answer to that question.” No one expects you to know everything about your case. You can offer to try to find out and get back to them.

14.  Be professional and appropriate in appearance, tone and language.