I give lots of demos every day, and I'm always on the lookout for things to make them better/smoother/cleaner. So the next time you have to give a technical presentation, here are some (hopefully) helpful tips:
Turn off all unnecessary applications. You don't want that IM from your significant other coming in during the middle of a discussion. Turn off your email, chat, twitter and any other programs that aren't relevant to your demonstration.
Remove any potentially offensive/confidential material from your recent items. The pics your brother-in-law sent of his latest Vegas exploit may be cool/funny, but they're not professional. On a related note, be professional when naming your computer. During a presentation I sat in on last week, the presenter's laptop was named WideAss. And since the name of his machine was prominently displayed in several places of the app being demonstrated, it's not like you could miss it. That's just not professional, and I couldn't ignore it.
Make it readable. If you're using slides, keep the font big. If you have to shrink the font to get everything to fit, edit, delete, or split it into multiple slides. If you're demo-ing code, keep that big, too. Scott Hanselman suggests using Lucinda Console 14 -18 pt font for all code demonstrations, and I've found that works very well. You lose your rythym as a presenter very quickly when you have to keep asking if everyone can read what's on your slides.
Finally, and most importantly practice! Spend some time saying exactly what you're going to say. Don't go halfway on this one; sitting in front of your slides saying "ok, now I'll talk about X" will not make an effective presentation. Say exactly what you're going to say, exactly how you want to say it. If that means you need to retreat to a conference room or hide in your car at lunch break, then do it. The more familiar you are with what you're going to say, the more confident you'll come across as.
I'll post more demo tips as I can, but what else have you done to make your presentations more effective?
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The most important thing about presentations that I can offer is to not read the slides. Don't read them. People in the room are perfectly capable of reading for themselves. If you absolutely must say it, leave it off the slide and put a picture up there instead.
ReplyDeleteWhat I like to do is put a basic script of what I'm going to say, or at least what I plan to cover, in the Notes section of the slide. That way, if I want to distribute them to folks afterwards, they still get benefit from reading them.