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Stop Breaking The Basic Rules of Presenting

by Ned Potter

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Blog post at http://bit.ly/hGhaFK. Some people are confident public speakers, other people get nervous. Either way, you still see a lot of people breaking the most basic rules of presenting, and those ...

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Stop Breaking The Basic Rules of Presenting Presentation Transcript

STOP BREAKING
THE
BASIC
OF
RULES
PRESENTING!
With your angry Drill Sergeant
@theREALwikiman

It’s so easy to avoid obvious mistakes when presenting.
After all, the audience is on your side. So make it worth their while!

FACE
First of all,
THE
FRONT!

For God’s sake, stop turning to face the big screen! You have a computer right in front of you – you know, the one you’re using to move your presentation materials along – so look at that instead, okay? That way people can actually HEAR you.

You’re reading it out,
ARE YOU FREAKING
KIDDING
ME?!

Don’t even get me started on this. Written prose has different phraseology, different tones, different nuances, different EVERYTHING from stuff you say out loud. If you’re reading your presentation out, IT IS AWFUL.

AND STOP
READING OUT
THE SLIDES
AS WELL.

Slides should support what you’re saying, not duplicate it – and they certainly shouldn’t be there to provide a surrogate for good content.

DID THAT SLIDE HAVE
SEVERAL
BULLET POINTS
ON?

Oh by the way

Oh by the way
The late nineties called.

Oh by the way
The late nineties called.
THEY WANT THEIR SUCKY PRESENTATION BACK.

Oh by the way
The late nineties called.
THEY WANT THEIR SUCKY PRESENTATION BACK.
Oh, and they said – don’t worry about recording that episode of Friends on your VHS player.

Oh by the way
The late nineties called.
THEY WANT THEIR SUCKY PRESENTATION BACK.
Oh, and they said – don’t worry about recording that episode of Friends on your VHS player.
It’ll probably be repeated at some point.

STOP USING
YOUR
CO-PRESENTER
AS A
CRUTCH!

Co-presenters, you DO NOT NEED to look at each other for support and encouragement! If you’re up on stage, own the stage, and talk to your fricking audience.

FINISH
YOUR
THOUGHTS.

Either say something, or don’t. None of this “yeah so basically, again… yeah” rubbish. Have you even practiced this talk?

UM.
STOP SAYING

Or ‘like’ or ‘sort of’ or ‘er’ – all you are doing is RUINING THE IMPACT OF YOUR WORDS. Have faith in what you’re saying.

STOP
APOLOGISING!

If the audience didn’t know there was supposed to be a video there but it didn’t play, why bore them with your superfluous apology? MOVE ON.

DID YOU
JUST
WALK IN FRONT
OF THE
PROJECTOR?

Seriously?

I LITERALLY
CANNOT BELIEVE
YOU JUST WENT
OVER
YOUR TIME LIMIT...

The arrogance! The conceit! The ill-preparedness! The disrespect to the event and to the other presenters!
Either make a presentation you can deliver within the allotted time, or say no to the invitation to speak...

Okay, that’s it.
Good luck with your presentations!

Click to view the background image (by Nasos3) on Flickr
PRESENTATION BY
NED POTTER
CLICK FOR MORE STUFF AT THEWIKIMAN.ORG
Ned Potter, aka thewikiman, is a writer (if he ever finishes his book), a speaker (there are no guarantees he will obey all the rules in this presentation, but he will at least try) and above all, A LIBRARIAN.

Ned Potter, Academic Liaison Librarian at University of York I'm afraid there isn't an audio version - this is designed as a stand-alone. If I was actually presenting this I'd use less text on the slides, or else I'd be breaking some of my own rules... 2 years ago

Are you sure you want to

Doug Caldwell, Instructor | Trainer | Facilitator at Caldwell Consulting, LLC Sherri: I would contact the author of the slideware, Ned Potter, LIFE-SHARE Project Officer at University of Leeds. Maybe he could record an audio voiceover or do a live Zipcast. 2 years ago

Sherri Noble, Training Developer at Emergency Management Queensland I love this presentation. Is there a version with audio? I really want to share this with my training staff and audio would really grab them. 2 years ago

Ned Potter, Academic Liaison Librarian at University of York Robert, you're right - but this is a black and white presentation that doesn't really deal in shades of grey (e.g there are times when lots of bullet points can be fine, it's just that so often they're really bad) so I went with the positive option on that one...

There can be a hostile crowd and a great presenter definitely needs the capability to deal with that in his or her arsenal. But this presentation is aimed at people who haven't thought too much about their presenting technique and can make things better with a few simple adjustments. So I don't want to scare them!

Plus I am a librarian, and this presentation was produced for my (mostly library) based blog - and in my experience, library conference crowds are often at the very least willing to give the presenter a chance. I think that knowing the audience wants you to succeed can really help - particularly if you're a new or nervous presenter. So that's why I chose that wording for that slide... 2 years ago

Ned Potter, Academic Liaison Librarian at University of York Doug, I stand (to attention) corrected! I blame Google, of course... 2 years ago

Ned Potter, Academic Liaison Librarian at University of York Home Tools - that does seem to be the case more and more, yes.. 2 years ago

Doug Caldwell, Instructor | Trainer | Facilitator at Caldwell Consulting, LLC Ooo-Rah!! [its a Marine thing]. If you are going to feature Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey, retired Marine/actor on the first slide he is a Drill Instructor, not sergeant. The US Army has Drill Sergeants. During his active duty then SSgt Ermey was a DI from 1965-67. 2 years ago

Robert Stackhouse at Energy System Lab, Texas Engineering Experiment Station I disagree with the wording rather than the message of the second slide.

I absolutely agree that you should make a presentation worthwhile for the audience. Otherwise, you are just wasting their time.

However, I don't think that you can assume that everyone in the audience in the context of every presentation ever is on the side of the presenter.

There could be people on the fence or even hecklers in the crowd. A good presenter needs to know how to deal with those types of people. 2 years ago

Selim Nevzat Sahin Anadolu Lisesi at Selim Nevzat Sahin Anadolu Lisesi Hi Ned, hahaha Well done! luv that! applies to any field one can think of, we all are 'presenters' in front of our clients, no matter what job, arent we?? 2 years ago

Probal DasGupta, Entrepreneur/CEO providing Cloud computing, Document/Workflow Management, Software Modernization, SAP & Healthcare IT at bodHOST / Artilligence Group of Companies Haha -- good job. I am going to share it with my techies who subscribe to almost all the mistakes you have listed. 2 years ago