PPD Assignment 2:4. Effective presentations

At this day and age, nearly everyone can expect to have an opportunity to give a presentation at some point of their professional lives, either within their workplace, or to a potential customer.

When it comes to giving a presentation, preparation is everything. Both my own experience and specialist opinion agree on this.

For preparation, one generally should, in the very least, consider the following:

Why are you giving this presentation? What's the result you're looking for?
What exactly are you going to say?
Who are you telling it? What, if anything, do they already know? What are their positions? Are they likely to be interested?
Where will you be presenting? Will all the equipment you'll need be there?
How will you deliver your message? What sort of approach would work with this audience?

Once you've these down, you can start crafting your actual presentation. This is when you need to come up with a logical structure for your presentation. There should always be a clear introduction, then the meat of your subject, and you should always finish with a summary or recap.

It's surprisingly hard to get things like the timing just right, so always, always, practice your presentation a few times. Practice won't just make the presentation better, but it will also make you properly familiar with it and help with any nervousness you might feel. I myself can quite enjoy public speaking, and always the more better prepared I am. This isn't to say I don't get the nerves, but it generally isn't my main worry when doing a presentation.

For those of a more nervous disposition, this teaser video has some useful things to say about nervousness and movement during your presentation:

Image source:http://www.research.ucla.edu/era/present/img002.GIFhttp://www.research.ucla.edu/era/present/sld002.htm