How to deliver a killer presentation!!

The first time I made a presentation on PowerPoint, I was in grade 7 or 8.It was my Computer teacher Sabina Dongol who asked me to make a PowerPoint presentation of a science project on the Project Day. I really enjoyed making and designing the slides and the presentation went well, too. So from there, an obsession of making an effective presentation has always been upon me. Since joining as an undergraduate in the School of Science in Kathmandu University, I’ve had to give hell a lot of presentations, but be it on a complex subject, or a trouble-free one, I always looked forward to it with great zeal.

Bjorn Soderberg

It was Bjorn Soderberg, the Norwegian entrepreneur, who had come to the University in 2013 to deliver a presentation on Entrepreneurship. I was stunned to witness that his slides had no texts, except a one-word topic, and how gracefully he gave the presentation. Secondly, on 4^th June 2014, prior to the World Environment Day, it was Prof. Dr. Suryaman Shakya. He mixed the subject matter with humor, and how he involved the audience was simply out of this world. There was some charismatic attribute in his presentation. And so, I was even more inspired to deliver “the perfect presentation” in near future.

Prof. Dr. Suryaman Shakya

So based on my experience, I want to help all my readers in delivering an outstanding presentation. So here are some of the things that you’ll need to be doing.

1. Understand what you are dealing with, I mean with the subject matter. This can be the toughest part if you are not into reading. But trust me, you have to build up an understanding on what topic you are presenting. No matter how good your presentation might be, what will make an impression is how tactfully you’ll deal with the questions bombarded upon you, and how well can you interpret what you’ve understood, or what you want to share.

2. Here is the part I want to tell my readers the most. Please do not fill up the slides with texts, texts and lengthy texts. The moment I see a complete sentence in someone’s slide, a little part of me dies inside. I mean, come on, you are not there to teach your audience the way lecturers do. You are there to share the knowledge you have gained on the topic. Plus, audience will start reading what’s in your slide, rather than paying you the slightest of the attention you deserve. So what’s the point of you standing over there and just throwing up the words!! You are there for “delivering the presentation”, not “Reading Competition”!!

3. Pictures!!! Yes, cut the words out as much as possible, unless those are data or definitions or something that should be said as it is or something you find very hard to fit into your brain. What you can do is put more of a pictures. They say a picture speaks a thousand words. And as a matter of fact, they do too. What I normally do is jazz up the background in PowerPoint by having a picture

appropriate or related to the topic. Say my topic is wildlife conservation, then what I do is google up some breath-taking pictures of wildlife and format the background and use a little bit of transparency option. But, I make sure that I don’t apply that to the whole slides. I like to give a bit of variation by putting other pictures in other slides.

And try putting visuals: graphs, charts, maps, photos, drawings, image, models, short video/film. But please, cut the words out.

4. Consider the audience!! Delivering presentation before layman and a specialist can be quite contrasting. To the layman, you’ll have to explain in a more simplified manner, while to the specialists, make sure you use some punch words, references to research paper and some data if possible.

5. Dress!! Wear the “appropriate” dress that makes you feel comfortable and gives you confidence. Trust me, you would not want to be going before the audience wearing an inappropriate or “not-so-good” dress as they can surely dampen your confidence. If so, you’ll be more worried about what people are thinking of you and how you are looking rather than on how to nail your presentation.

6. Be submissive when you are presenting. Showing your attitude and speaking with confidence are two completely different things. And please put some smile on your face, will you? I mean no body at first place is willingly paying attention to “that” presentation, so at least you smile rather than frown. It draws the concentration of audiences upon you.

7. Be loud, and clear if you can. And, please speak slowly, no one is there from Guinness World Record to see if you can beat the world record of the fastest speaking person! The bottom line is not to finish quickly but to make sure your audiences understand what you are trying to tell them, and high number of “words per minute” is just not the way to do that.

8. Presentation hardly means a test of your English-speaking skills. I have been telling my friends this time and again, but no, they don’t seem to get it. It’s about evaluating how much you have understood the subject matter and how well you can make your audiences understand that!! So if all the audience can understand your mother tongue then why not!! Is speaking in English everything? NO.

9. Plan your delivery, especially if there is some kind of time frame. Decide beforehand which slide is the least important one, so that you can skip if you start taking a longer time than what had been assumed.

10. Developing the stage presence. This takes practice and confidence. The major mistake, or should I say weakness, that most people make is that they move so much, either swaying from left to right, or shifting the weight from one leg to the another. It’s hard to tell if you are making a presentation or practicing movement for some sport. Just try to keep your lower body fixed, that would keep the distraction for audience at minimum. But make sure you do some hand movements. But do it in a more natural way.

11: Eye contact!!! I have seen most of the people just looking at their teachers and explaining them, not even the slightest delineation of eye contact towards others. Hell, she/he knows that!! It’s the audience who hardly has the knowledge of it. So don’t be a coward, look into the eyes of everybody from your extreme left to the extreme right. It is the eye contact that snatches the audiences’

concentration into you. It’s like proposing to the girl you love the most. I suppose you’ll look into her eyes and say what you want to! Same with the presentation! What I used to in the past was look in the eyes of my friends or some friendly-looking face. That gave me further confidence. If you find problem in that, practice a 7-second rule, something I learned from the movie “Larry Crowne”. You look at the left side, and slowly drift away to the middle and then to the right; and vice-versa.

12:  Get to the point while you are explaining. Well, that comes from practice. So make sure you have rehearsed enough, which makes it a lot easier. And search for examples. They are crucial to an effective presentation.

13: Confidence is the key!! Step with an attitude that everyone in the stage is an idiot (no offense 😉 ), and you are the only one there who knows everything about the topic. Otherwise, your confidence starts to dampen a bit. Besides, nobody is going to kill you if you say something wrong, are they?

…and that’s that. Thank you for reading. So the next time you go to make a presentation, you make sure nervousness does not overcome your confidence. Be strong, never stop believing in yourself. Have a happy presentation in the near future. 🙂