The old ones are the best, so they say… I’m not sure it’s true about music and jokes but in the last few weeks I’ve sat through some presentations that disappointed me – not only did they not use the techniques for effective presentations, they actively tried (it seemed to me!) to break the basic rules, never mind the advanced ones!
With that in mind, perhaps it’s time to go back to basics, to bring out some of the old, old tips.
So here we go – oldies but goodies.
- Don’t look at the screen. That’s right, not just don’t read of it, don’t look at it. Your audience didn’t come to see the back of your head, they cam to see your face (in as much as they came to see you at all!). Don’t be so rude as to turn your back on people you’re supposed to be talking with.
- Use the B key. It toggles the screen to black (and back again). If you want to get your audience to really, really concentrate and concentrate on you in particular, black out your screen. Fading into a black slide is nicer, of course, but sometimes even the best of us get taken by surprise and decide to go black. When that happens, simply tap the B key and when you want to start the slides again, hit it again. You can also use the W key to go to a white-out screen, but I can’t think why you’d do that, to be honest!
- Don’t step into the cone… that’s the cone of light between your projector and the screen. You’ll get shadows on your screen and the image that should be on your screen will be on your chest. Neither of these is a good thing, believe me. The only time you want to case shadows like this is when you’re making bunny shapes on the wall to entertain children.
- Dress smartly. I”m not saying you need to be in a three-piece suit, or the women’s equivalent, but you should be at least as smart as your audience – and preferably a step smarter to give yourself a little bit of authority. Don’t go overboard and turn up in a killer suit if everyone else is in scruffy jeans as it’ll just set you too far apart from your audience. I f they’re in scruffy jeans, you should be in smart jeans…….
- Don’t use a script. Almost no one can write a script that works well when it’s spoken out loud. Those that can are professional speech-writers and if you’re reading this blog I’m assuming that you’re not! Write you outline, pick your keywords and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. In theory it’s possible to over-rehearse but I’ve only ever seen it once in my entire career.
- Rehearse. Yes, I know I’ve just said it, but people don’t listen. Only experts can improvise – and even then they can only do it after a lot of rehearsal. Seriously.
