When you are presenting, there will be an audience. It’s a good idea to learn skills that allow you to perform best in front of groups of people. Here are some ways to improve your presenting skills.
- Look at the audience. Pay attention to your audience, at-least make yourself look like you’re paying attention to the audience. This makes the experience of the presentation feel much more interactive. Some presenters may sometimes end up looking at their slides instead of the audience without even intending to. Make sure you are looking towards the audience and look at your slides as little as possible. You could even ask the audience to tell you when you end up looking at the slides.
- Practice before the event. You want to say the right things when you are presenting, so you need to practice saying the right things. If your presentation has a time constraint, this is a good way of testing if your presentation fits in your time constraint.
- Know your audience, or atleast take a guess. You need to figure out an answer to these three questions before designing your presentation. Who is the audience? What do you want the audience to do after the presentation? And what questions might they ask?
For example, if you are presenting for a science class, your answers to these questions might look something like this: The audience are the students who have made presentations like mine and the teacher grading me. I want the teacher to grade me an A in this assignment and the students to learn the science fact. The audience might ask about things like the science fact applied to real world, something they missed about how something works, etc. - Adjust your mindset. It may be nerve wracking to present on front of the audience, it sure is for me. You should think of the presentation as a time to talk about what you learned rather than a performance. This will make you feel less anxious about the event.
- Ask for questions. The audience may have some questions after the presentation. Allowing the audience to contribute to your presentation like this is important for making it resonate with the audience. This is a great way to communicate information you might not have mentioned or clarify what might have been confusing about your presentation.
For those interested after the event
Presentation does not stop at the end. You can get some extra mileage out of the time after presentation. Consider these tips
There may be some people who are interested in seeing the presentation again after the event. You could find a way to have a link to the presentation after the presentation. You could also put a link to the slides at the end of the presentation.
You should consider putting the presentation in a portfolio. Portfolio is a place to look for your previous works. If you think your presentation is great, it might make for a good asset in your portfolio.
More Stuff
Here are some resources. These articles and videos are made by Garr Reynolds.
