Road to Netbeans (Nov 5)
Finished Demo Today. I think I'll try to let it done again, meanwhile, the presentation should be paid attention. I got a guide for presentation, which shoul be useful for me.
How to Lose an Audience in 10 Easy Ways
- the reader
- the unprepared
- the mumbler
- and the ever popular animation wizard
Have you ever experienced any of these scenarios while sitting through a presentation?
The audience is settled. You are all set to start your presentation and - guess what? The
projector doesn't work. You didn’t bother to check it out earlier.
Presentation Tip 1
Check all the equipment and rehearse your presentation, using this
projector long before your time to present. Carry an extra projector
bulb. If possible, check the lighting in the room you will be
presenting in, prior to your time in the limelight. Make sure you know
how to dim the lights if the room is too bright.
You
memorized the content (and it shows, by the way). Someone has a
question. Panic sets in. You never prepared for questions and all you
know about this topic is what is written on the slides.
Presentation Tip 2
Know your material so well, that
you could easily do the presentation without an electronic enhancement
such as PowerPoint. Use key words and phrases and include only
essential information to keep the audience focused and interested. Be
prepared for questions and know the answers.
This is the opposite of Information Underload. You know so much
about the topic, that you jump from here to there and back again
talking about everything there is to know about your brand new widget,
and no one can follow the thread of the presentation.
Presentation Tip 3
Use the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Silly Simple) when designing a
presentation. Stick to three, or at the most, four points about your
topic and expound on them. The audience will be more likely to retain
the information.
An
audience member says that she can't read the slides. You graciously
tell her you will be reading them and proceed to do so, while looking
up at the screen. Each of your slides in filled with the text of your
speech. Why do they need you?
Presentation Tip 4
Simplify the content, keeping the most important information near the
top of the slide for easy reading in the back rows. Focus on one topic
area and use no more than 4 bullets per slide. Speak to the audience, not to the screen.
You
figured no one will notice that you didn't do much research on your
topic if you add lots of photos and complicated looking graphs.
Presentation Tip 5
“Time is Money” is really true in today's world. No one wants to waste
their time sitting through a presentation with no substance. Use
photos, charts and diagrams only
to illustrate key points of your presentation. They add a nice break to
the material, and when used correctly, can only enhance your oral
presentation.
Small,
script type fonts might look great when you are sitting 18 inches away
from the monitor. You didn't consider the lady sitting 200 feet away
from the screen who can't read them.
Presentation Tip 6
Stick to
easy to read fonts
such as Arial or Times New Roman. Avoid script type fonts which are
hard to read on screen. Use no more than two different fonts – one for
headings another for content and no less than a 30 pt font so that
people at the back of the room can read them easily.
You heard blue was a good color for a design template.
You found a really cool template on the internet, with a beach scene.
Water is blue, right? Unfortunately, your presentation is about some
nifty new tools to show at a Woodcarvers’ convention.
Presentation Tip 7
Choose a design template that is appropriate for the audience. A clean, straightforward layout is best for
business presentations. Young children respond to presentations that are full of color and contain a variety of shapes.
Your vacation cruise was so fantastic that you took 500 photos, and put them all in a
digital photo album to impress your friends. After the first 100 slides, snores were heard in the room.
Presentation Tip 8
Ensure your audience stays focused by keeping the number of slides to a
minimum. 10 to 12 is plenty. Some concessions can be made for a photo
album, since most pictures will be on screen for only a short time. Be
kind though. Think how much you enjoy everyone else’s vacation pictures!
You found all the really cool animations
and sounds and used 85% of them in your presentation, to impress
everyone with your flair. Except -- the audience doesn’t know where to
look, and have totally lost the message of your presentation.
Presentation Tip 9
Animations and sounds,
used well, can heighten interest, but don't distract the audience with
too much of a good thing. Design your presentation with the "less is
more” philosophy. Don't let your audience suffer from animation
overload.
10) Save the Christmas Colors for Holiday Parties
You loveunusual color combinations together. Your PowerPoint presentation is
not the time to use them. An orange and blue combination is unsettling
to an audience and there may be people present who cannot see red and
green due to color blindness.
Presentation Tip 10
Use good contrast with the
background to make your text easy to read.
- Dark text on a light background is best, but avoid white
backgrounds -- tone it down by using beige or another light color that
will be easy on the eyes. Dark backgrounds are very effective, but be
sure to make text a light color for easy reading.
- Patterned or textured backgrounds make text hard to read.
- Keep the color scheme consistent.
The Bottom Line
To be a good presenter you need to be engagingwith the audience and know your topic. Keep the presentation concise
and include only relevant information. Use an electronic enhancement,
such as PowerPoint, as an accompaniment to your presentation to reinforce
your point, not as a crutch. Remember -- your slide show is not the presentation -- you are the presentation.
