Presentations are a part of most real-life work environments. They are an effective tool in a variety of different situations; you may have to give a presentation as an employee in a large company where you need to communicate your work and goals with your colleagues and managers, or it may be to get funding for a project. Either way it is a valuable skill to be able to summarise and communicate your ideas to other people in a concise and understandable way.
They can take different forms and the format will vary but for this project you will be creating a 10 minute presentation of your report.
When presenting to other people you must always think about who you’re communicating with; what do they need to know and how will they best understand the information? These questions are especially important in the computer industry because not everyone involved in your projects will be interested or familiar with the technical aspects of your work. We also looked at this question when writing reports.
Ask yourself these questions:
Who are you presenting to and what do they need to know? What are the goals of your presentation?
How much technical information do you need to give them, if any?
How can you simplify or summarise the technical information in a way that someone from a non-technical background might understand?
How formal does your language need to be?
Is humour appropriate? Will it help keep people engaged?
As you will be presenting your report think about what information you might present to get people so interested in your report that they want to read the whole document.
Much of the preparation for your presentation will have been done while creating your report. The process for both is the same, but the main difference is that a presentation won’t go as in depth as a report and is more of a summary of information. Most presentations will be between 10 and 30 minutes long (yours should only be 10). While this may sound like a long time, you will be surprised how quickly time can go when you talk, so the fundamental skill of preparing a presentation is choosing the information to share and thinking about how you will present it.
Since you have already written a report, you have all the information that is going to go into the presentation already. What you need to think about is:
What is your report about and why is it important to the audience
Which parts are necessary for the audience to understand your conclusion
And how will you present that information; will you use bullet point lists in a slideshow? Do you need diagrams/images? Are videos or sound necessary? How much text will you put on the slides?
Don’t leave it to the last minute
Make sure you know what you’re going to say, what order you’re going to say it in and that you understand the content.
Don’t provide too much information
Less is more. Overloading people can be more confusing than helpful, especially if the topic is new to them. Give your audience enough information to pique their interest and then you can direct them to other resources for more information.
Don’t read from a script
While it is useful to prepare notes about what you are going to say, reading from a prepared piece of text can make a presentation monotonous and difficult to focus on. Practice explaining your ideas with a prompt or bulleted list.
Don’t speak too fast or too quietly
You want people to understand what you’re saying, but not speak so slowly that they get bored. Ask your audience if you’re unsure about the best pacing for your presentation.
Don’t include too many special effects or flares and whistles
Try to keep the focus on what you’re saying rather than the visuals. They should be there only to aid you, not distract from what you’re saying.
There are different tools you can use to help you present information. For this project we will be using a slideshow based tool. You can either use Powerpoint, if you have the software installed on your computer, or Google Slides, which is a free web-application that provides similar functionality.
You will be using these programs to create a slideshow that will run alongside your spoken presentation. This is the format you will be presenting your report research in. It should provide a visual aid to the information. It is up to you what you display and how many slides you have but here are some tips on creating the slideshow:
Provide a roadmap for your audience. Use one slide at the beginning (after a title slide) to tell them what your presentation will cover and the order you will present things. This will help them follow along as you move through your content.
Don’t fill your slides with text, you want people to focus on what you’re saying.
Think about how much time you have and how much time you need to explain the different parts of your report. You don’t want to have to rush through the information and speak quickly.
Include images, diagrams and videos to help illustrate your message. Ensure that they are good quality.
Keep the aesthetic simple and professional, you don’t want your presentation to distract people from what you’re saying.
Use transitions and effects in moderation. They can be distracting and look unprofessional.
Plan the slides so they synchronise with what you’re saying. Know when to switch between them.
Think about how the slides will compliment what you’re actually saying. A good presentation involves skilled public speaking and a planned presentation.
Mastering public speaking can be crucial to the growth of your business and the success of your projects. As we have discussed, you need to be able to talk about your products and communicate your ideas effectively because there will always be other people involved in your work, be it customers, investors or colleagues. It takes time, practice and experience but here are some tips to get you started:
Relate to the audience
You can use personal stories or relate it to your audience’s work and circumstances. Examples and custom demos can help you with that.
Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse
Don’t just think you can wing a presentation. You need to rehearse and then warm up. Feeling comfortable and practiced will help calm your nerves and keep you from freezing in front of your audience
Plan but don’t write a script
Consider creating small flash cards that remind you of your key points in a bulleted list. They might also indicate when you need to change the slide. Remember that you don’t want to be reading an essay word for word. You also don’t want to read exactly what’s on your slide, the audience can read that themselves.
Include interactive elements
Ask the audience questions, or ask a volunteer to help with a demonstration. This can be a really effective way of keeping the audience’s attention.
Be prepared
Are your slides online? On a USB stick? If you have sound and video, do you have the equipment to present it properly? Technical difficulties can make you look incompetent, so avoid them by making sure everything is ready and working.
Follow up, stand out
Have a Questions and Answers (Q & A) section at the end to give the audience a chance to clear up any doubts and to show that you really know what you’re talking about. Try to anticipate the kinds of questions they might have and be prepared with answers.
In presentation etiquette, it all comes down to one thing: valuing your audience. This means speaking directly to them, having all the information prepared and practiced, and above all, being worthwhile of their time. If you remain focused on providing value to your audience, you’ll find yourself giving successful presentations every time. You might not always give the best presentation but you will always learn something and be able to improve. Here are some ways of you can keep improving:
Practice
It’s only through actually rehearsing your presentation that you will get a sense of how you can improve it. You can do this in a mirror, or you can ask a friend/classmate to listen. You could even record yourself. Crucially you should time yourself to make sure you’re within 10 minutes.
When you do this, you might discover that you need to:
Change the order of the slides, or points your making
You might need to remove information to keep within the time limit
Include more pictures to illustrate what you’re saying
Interaction
Communicate with your audience. You don’t have to be very formal. Ask them if they can hear you properly or if you’re speaking too quickly. You can even open up your presentation and let them know they can ask you questions if they are unsure of anything during the presentation. Feel confident enough to interact with them. It will make your presentation dynamic and it means that you can respond to problems more instantly.
Feedback
Feedback is crucial to learning any skill. When you have worked on something closely and for a long time it can be hard to step back and assess it objectively. Like with your report which you gave to classmates to proofread, ask for constructive criticism from a friend or, depending on your audience, after the presentation ask your audience how they think it went. You could even ask them to anonymously write their feedback down.
While feedback is one way of gauging how successful your presentation has been, you might also want to think about what you were hoping to achieve from the presentation and whether you succeeded in that. In the context of presenting your report, here are some questions you might ask yourself:
Did anyone ask to read the full report after the presentation?
Did anyone follow up on any of the points you mentioned?
Did anyone talk to you after the presentation about the information you had presented?
Did people engage with your Q & As? That can be a good indication that people were listening and interested in what you were saying.
If you think the presentation was successful you might want to keep the presentation template. Perhaps reflect on the experience and make notes for next time you have to do a presentation. Since your classmates will be presenting their reports as well, what do you think was successful about their presentations? Is there something you have learnt from them?