Presentation skills - Jackie I.

Watching everyone in class present their topics using a PowerPoint slide show got me thinking about a few things that some people did really well. Good presenting skills are an important part of the business environment. You need to be able to relate important information to those people that need to know in an easily understood and time-efficient way. It's probably a good idea to film yourself or have a good friend watch you as you practice presenting so you can make sure your doing everything you should.

A good slide show is the first thing you need to make sure you have. Pertinent information on each slide, but not too wordy so that your audience isn't too overwhelmed with all the reading. You should have just enough so that you can refer to it when your explaining your topic in more detail. And we know that the words should be bold and in black with an appropriate design template. Of course you need to also be prepared to know what you're going to say and in what order so you don't stumble or confuse yourself(and your audience) when up there speaking.

Other things that are important when presenting is that you speak clearly, have knowledge of the topic, make eye contact, don't read directly from the slides all the time, or your paper in front of you, don't flip through the slides to quickly, etc. Practice makes perfect of course, so you'll get better as you go on. But to be aware of these things and work to fix them right away we'll be very helpful to your presenting sucess in the future.