Nail that presentation
Presentations come in various forms and we’ve all had our fair share at making one and more times than once, being in the audience. But how many times have we really paid complete attention from slide one till the end?
There are a set of things I keep in mind when creating a presentation, and I hope it helps you get it better the next time.
Choose the right tool
The first thing to do is get your building blocks right. You do not want to spend a lot of time in getting the right look for your slides.
After years of using the tried and tested MS Powerpoint, I’ve personally found Apple Keynote to be one of the best tools for creating a kickass presentation. It has got spectacular in-built templates, fonts, customization options which basically caters to the needs of any kind of presentation.
Topic — crisp (A tagline is always welcome)
The first slide you show is usually going to be the start line. Take a moment to explain the context of your presentation, give the audience an idea of what they can expect out of the next few minutes. While you’re doing that, people are going to look through the slide to get their first impressions.
Give a very unconventional non-normal type of title. For example, “How does an airplane fly?” sounds like a plain old topic whereas “From the ground up” with the tag “To infinity and beyond” is a fresh coat of paint to the same title, which makes quite a difference. Relevant, catchy, with a tagline and you have yourself a good start.
Begin light
Nobody wants to kick off first day of school with the problems involving integrals and differentials. Start with a light note, something to get their neurons firing up to a steady start. A simple joke to engage the audience has always worked wonders for me.
Just leave the slide up and welcome the audience to interact. Adding personal experiences will make the audience want to listen in more and draws their attention. Pull them closer so that you know it when they drift apart.
Keep it as interactive as possible and just throw away the “I’ll take questions at the end” card. Make them understand that this is a two way street. The audience are as important as you are.
Numbers are not for everyone
It is a common misunderstanding that a presentation with cool graphs and figures is always a hit among audience. Frankly, many people start losing interest once you dump too much information onto them. Publish critical facts, keep it to a bare minimum and only reveal more on a need to know basis. When you keep it interactive, they would reach out to you when they need more information about something, which is when you take to the stage about more information.
A picture speaks a thousand words
You might have a very intense concept which would take paragraphs to explain but do you really want to add that to a slide and make people read off that? Add in a picture which would do that for you instead. People are always prone to curiosity when a picture is in front of them. It helps them to register whatever it is you’re saying, more clearly and easily.
The end is as important as the beginning
In every presentation, there will be a time when people start looking at their watch, wondering when the “Thank you” slide or “Questions?” slide would come up.
Don’t give them a chance to do that. Keep your slides as minimal as possible but transfer all the information you want to, through yourself. The slides are there to help you pass on the information better, not to do that for you.
End with an interesting note. If you’d kept the session interactive, there would not be a need to allocate a separate time for any questions. A relevant quote or a funny cliffhanger always intrigues the audience.
If a few of them go back and look up something you ended your presentation with — congratulations, you’ve nailed it!
