So you are about to prepare a presentation and give a speech to quite a big audience. What do you do? You draft the topic, the agenda, probably divide the whole speech into parts and finally put a lot of diagrams and bullet points. Please, stawp!!! :o
Please, don’t be boring
The boring presentations come with various forms. They can kill the audience with the ultra coherence. All the slides look the same, the template is elegant but nothing draws my attention. Mix it a little bit. The slides with one sentence only are great for very charismatic speakers but even they put some visuals once in a while to the screen. Make a photo, include your crappy hand drawing. Let them feel that you are a human being who likes some fun. This brings me to the next point…
Please, don’t be a professor
People love stories and hate theory. People learn be watching examples and by repeating stuff. Would you really like to go for a talk if the speaker showed diagrams all the time and analyze statistics with no relationship to the real world? I wouldn’t.
Please, relate your talk to other stories
Nothing brings the attention like quoting a person in the audience. I know because I experienced it myself while I saw my tweet on the screen during the talk. Now I pay it back ;) Hi Polle!
So think of politics, music or people conversations at the event. Try to make your talk more personal.
Please, be funny
Don’t let us fool ourselves. We listen to presentations for entertainment. Make a joke once in a while. It might be lame but if you don’t try to turn your talk into a standup comedian show, people will appreciate the effort.
Please, practice
Go out and make speeches. Practice makes perfect. Nobody was born a great speaker :)
