Comments on: How not to suck at your presentation

By: The Story of My “Second Life” » BBworld 2007: What a Rush!

The Story of My “Second Life” » BBworld 2007: What a Rush! — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:02:51 +0000

[…] experience but also a painful lesson. Any time I am in front of an audience my goal is to give A Presentation That Does Not Suck. I have incredibly high expectations as a conference attendee and virtually no patience whatsoever […]

By: Jeff Barr’s Blog » Links for Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Jeff Barr’s Blog » Links for Wednesday, December 20, 2006 — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 14:51:18 +0000

[…] David Megginson: How Not to Suck at Your Presentation – “Things will go wrong, but you can minimize the damage by following some simple guidelines.“ […]

By: Quoderat » XML 2006: Day Two

Quoderat » XML 2006: Day Two — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 03:09:44 +0000

[…] Before the conference, I posted about How not to suck at your presentation, concentrating on technical issues like font size and live demos. Sarah O’Keefe covers some of the same points, but mostly addresses presentation style, including the excellent advice not simply to read the bullet points on your slides out loud to the audience. […]

By: enoone

enoone — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:26:38 +0000

Sorry, but anyone who gets the idea to use any technical means to flower up his presentation, but does not know how to employ such technical means, is in my opinion not worth listening to.

And for the rest: if you can think for yourself, please do so. If you cannot, don’t come around asking us to do the thinking.

By: protocol7 » Blog Archive » links for 2006-11-22

protocol7 » Blog Archive » links for 2006-11-22 — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 12:17:49 +0000

[…] How not to suck at your presentation (tags: by:david_megginson presen presentation) […]

By: Bob DuCharme

Bob DuCharme — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 03:11:45 +0000

I’ve got two time-related tips:

– Don’t talk about talking about your talk. Telling the audience that you’re going to cover the last few slides really quickly doesn’t make them go more quickly; it makes them go more slowly because your wishful thinking out loud just extended the time it took to cover your remaining material.

– No matter how many important things you have to say, if you go over the allotted time, the audience’s mind will switch off when your time is up and they won’t hear what you have to say anyway. Show them the courtesy of timing your talk beforehand and trimming it down so that it really does fit in the allotted time. If you’re giving the last talk before lunch and you go over time, the audience will really, really resent you. They’ll wind up at the end of the buffet line as they watch their friends eat at tables all around them, just because you had to read every single bullet point about the new version’s greater ease of use.

By: Lauren Wood

Lauren Wood — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 22:00:10 +0000

A good set of hints for people to follow. I have a couple more from from my experiences as chair…
1) double-check what time your talk is meant to start
2) show up in enough time before the session starts that you can make sure your laptop plugs into the presentation system and shows whatever you’re planning on showing (note if you’re second in the session, that means show up before the first speaker starts speaking!)
3) remember that people are in the room because they want to hear your talk, so speak loudly enough and slowly enough that they can hear each word

These things make a big difference.