Rules of the Game

I'll start this off with I was in my humanities class a few days ago and we have been giving presentations lately. Now I am not here to critique anyone specifically, this is more a general set of tips for people giving presentations, because really I thought its maybe a skill that some people do not learn and it might be helpful.

• When giving a presentation, try to stand up if it is possible. This gives you a sense of authority and prevents you from being overly relaxed and helps with posture. If you are not able to slouch in your chair while speaking about your topic then you will probably sounds less bored about it.

• Make eye-contact with the people you are presenting to. This means both the teacher and your classmates, or in a business setting or other, just try to give equal eye-contact I suppose. The eye-contact works in a two fold manner: firstly if individuals in the audience are being directly looked at during your speech/presentation, then they will feel more engaged in what you are talking about and more likely to pay attention. Secondly by looking out into the audience you can for yourself judge by body language how your speech is going so far.
  

• Keep Things fresh if possible. If you overly plan out what you are going to say you might end up sounding robotic, or if you are nervous about presenting in front of a crowd and plan on just reading off of your paper, well this is not the best idea either (in my opinion, perhaps you are an excellent reader of papers like Morgan Freeman). Here's the two options I think work: either a) use a power point or set of note cards to give you something to go off of. With a power point it also gives you a visual aid to give your audience something else to engage them, some people are more visual learners vs audio. If you do use a power point don't overload the slides; just a few quick notes to give you a spring board towards what you need to say. Same thing with note cards. b) if you absolutely need to read straight off of a long written paper: take breaks. You read faster than you know, probably which means the audience needs some time to have the information settle in. Maybe look around, ask if things make sense, don't be afraid to re-explain things in a different way.
  

• Here's a simple one, don't chew gum while presenting/speaking in front of a group. It muffles your voice and effectively removes any authority you might have had going in. Basically it tends to be distracting and gives the impression that you do not care about what you are talking about.

• And lastly Don't Panic. I'm sure you're going to be a little nervous for whatever reason, I get nervous about presenting sometimes too. In the end there's nothing to worry about, the rest of the people in the class probably also have to present and are going to be forgiving if you mess up, your teacher probably will understand also. And maybe you aren't excited about your topic, but fake it if you can. Make your audience believe what you are talking about is incredibly exciting. If you are nervous then this is a good way to overcome that and its a good way to embed what you are talking about in your audience's mind.

Okay that's about it, maybe I should have split this up into two posts. Oh well, you will just have to suffer through it in one installment. Also I might give helpful little tips like this from time to time. Not that I'm going to pretend to know much more about life than anyone else, but I think I have picked up a few things so far.