If you’re responsible for the whole event, it falls on to you to deal with a handful of tasks that seemingly have nothing to do with your presentation. Factors like lighting and furniture can have a huge impact on your audience’s experience. Unfortunately, if you’re late or equipment fails, your audience may be less receptive to your message.
Try to take care of the following ahead of time so you can solve any problems before the audience arrives.
Know how to unlock the doors, adjust the lights, and control the temperature. If you have to dim the lights in order to see the screen, make sure there’s a light projecting on you whenever you’re speaking so your audience can see you.
If you have control over the way the room is set up, place the podium at center stage and your screen off to the side. The slides are for speaker support—what you’re saying is the main attraction.
Set up and test the equipment, or coordinate with your tech support people who’ll be running the lights and the public address system.
If your audio person needs to manage inputs—say, from your laptop’s sound output and your microphone—print a slide list for her (see Printing Your Slides) with all the audio cues clearly indicated. For example, she might need to fade out the “walk-in” music and turn on your microphone input; or she may need to turn up the sound from your computer’s audio during a part of the presentation while turning off your mic.
Set up tables or set out information packets or programs.
Make sure there are clear signs prominently posted to help attendees find the room so they know they’ve come to the right place.
Figure out the parking situation, handicapped access, and restroom locations.
Greet people as they come in to make them feel welcome and help them get oriented.
When it’s time to start and your audience is seated, don’t launch right into your program. Welcome the audience, introduce yourself, and tell them what presentation they’re attending so they know they’re in the right room. Make sure everyone has a seat and a program. Tell them how long the session will run, if there will be a break, and where the bathrooms are. Explain how you’d like to handle questions from the audience—whether they should shout them out at any time, save them until the end, line up at a microphone, or whatever. If you’ve brought printed handouts (Printing Your Slides) or posted your slides on the Web, let the audience know they don’t need to take notes.
Explaining these seemingly simple things to your audience may seem like a waste of time, but it actually serves to increase their comfort level, lower their defenses, and make them feel like they’re part of the group—all of which will make them better and more receptive listeners.
The time has come to finally talk about your topic. Try to open with a bang—catch people’s attention and tell them how this presentation is going to be valuable to them, and what they’re going to take away from it.
At this point you may want to query your listeners to see how they relate to your topic—both for your own benefit and theirs. Ask for a show of hands: “How many of you are running Mac OS X Server?” “Who’s had, or has a loved one who’s had breast cancer?” “How many of you are parents of seventh or eighth graders?”
Choose your questions so all the audience members see themselves as part of one or another of these groups. The responses you get will give you a better idea of the makeup of the audience—and it helps everyone feel like they belong as they identify with others who respond similarly.
Now that your audience has told you something about themselves, tell them something about yourself. For example: why are you qualified to speak on your topic?
After all your preparation, planning, and practice, giving your presentation should be a piece of cake. You’ve got great information, you know it inside out, and you’ve tailored it to this particular group of people. Relax and enjoy the process of sharing. During your talk keep these points in mind:
If you don’t feel relaxed, fake it. Your audience will never know the difference. Never make apologies for being nervous.
Speak to the audience—don’t just read from a script or recite. Look your listeners in the eye—in all parts of the room.
Don’t stare at your laptop or look behind you at the screen.
Enthusiasm is contagious—smile! Let the audience see how enthusiastic you are about your topic.
Vary your cadence when speaking—pauses can be very powerful.
Don’t read your slides (unless there’s a compelling need to for the benefit of blind or foreign-language speaking members of the audience).
If you have a slide full of text it probably doesn’t need to be there—that’s what should be in your speech. In fact, don’t even use complete sentences in your slides—sentences belong in your speech.
Wrap up your presentation with a review. Now’s when you “tell them what you told them.” Let audience members know what you hope they’ve gained from this presentation and what you expect them to do with it—buy your product, sign up for a time share, host a foreign-exchange student, or whatever.
Make any other concluding statements, put up a slide with your contact information, and remind them where you’ll be after the presentation if they have more questions. Explain how you sincerely want their feedback on this presentation so that you can improve it in the future. Urge them to take a moment to fill out feedback forms, assuming you’ve chosen to prepare them as described in the next section.
Finally, thank them for coming and for their attention—and take a bow as the audience applauds and cheers.
You’ve completed your presentation. You think you did a pretty good job—the audience applauded, no rotten fruits or vegetables hit the stage, and several people told you, “Nice job.” But how can you be sure? Getting feedback is a step that’s often overlooked, and while not appropriate for every presentation, it’s a vital tool for judging your success using something other than guesswork. Audience feedback can tell you whether you succeeded in getting your message across, how useful the information is to the audience, and how you might improve the presentation—or similar presentations—next time.
The quickest, most direct—and least accurate—feedback method is to simply question your listeners and ask for a show of hands (see the box on Designing an evaluation form). If you go this route design your questions carefully because you can only ask about three or four without annoying most folks.
Tip
Consider using instant feedback. Throw out some raised-hand feedback questions part way through your presentation. You’ll be able to gauge how well you’re doing, and be able to modify your presentation to make the best use of your remaining time.
If you have a lot riding on the outcome of your presentation, consider hiring a professional evaluator to design evaluation forms and help you interpret the results. There are many different approaches to designing these forms. The type of presentation you’re giving and the type of outcome you’re hoping for will determine the kinds of questions you need to ask.
You can design evaluation questions as review questions (to see if your listeners recall the points you made) or you can ask participants what they got out of the presentation. Questions can be answered with a simple yes or no, with a set of multiple-choice answers, or according to a rating scale. People are likely to skip open-ended, essay-type questions that take too long to complete.
Design your evaluation questions carefully in order to judge your success and target ways to improve your presentation next time. Use a mix of simple yes/no or checkbox questions along with open-ended questions and rating scales. One side of one page is about as much as you can ask of your audience—remember, they’re doing you a favor by filling this out.
Tip
There’s an excellent example of an evaluation form you can download at www.missingmanuals.com/cds.
When you ask your listeners to fill out an evaluation, you’re turning the tables on them—asking them to give you information. It’s not always easy to get your audience to cooperate, so consider using some kind of incentive. For example, you could give a small gift in exchange for completed evaluation forms or use the forms in a drawing for door prizes.