What does a presentation mean?
Presentation is an action where a presenter is presenting something. Officially, when someone decides to explain a theory or an idea, he presents it.
For example, you can watch Steve Jobs introducing his product.
Other samples of a presentation
1- A principal that wants to announce the rise of funding for school and has to explain the school activities.
2- A public speaker that wants to introduce his educational course in a free seminar.
3- An expert who wants to introduce his new product to a company.
4- A student who has to defend his thesis
Most of us deal with presentations every day, formally or informally.
What is the purpose of a presentation?
You have to have a purpose for your presentation
In this article, we want to know when we will be considered successful?
If you don’t determine a purpose for your actions, you would not know where you go. So it’s best if you first focus on:
Determining a purpose to know what to do to fulfill it.
The purpose of our presentations can be:
– Changing others’ opinion
– Selling a product
– Showing our skills and abilities
– Giving new information
– Impressing the headmaster or the professor
Know your audience in the presentation
It’s best to know your audience in the presentation
It’s crucial to whom you are presenting. The audience is the key in the pubic speaking.
We have to consider the audience’s features, such as:
– Age
– Sexuality
– Their needs
– Their previous knowledge
– Interests
– Their fears
– Economical position
– Cultural position
When you know this information, you know whether to make jokes or not. What to say? Make it simple because they are teenagers or use hard words because they are adults?
So audience analysis is fundamental.
Use an official source.
One of the biggest challenges in a seminar is that whether he is using an official source or not.
I’ve seen in presentations that one of the audience interrupts the speaker and asks: “what is the source of this?”, “who said that?” “where did you gain these statistics?” “can you prove it?”.
So if we want to be a successful presenter, we must have an official source.
Remember to:
– Use an updated source
– Explain everything with its source
– Know how to use statistics
For the last one (statistics), I suggest you read “how to lie with statistics?“.
correct performance: tone and rhetoric
It doesn’t matter how important and impressive your presentation is, you have to beautify it.
it doesn’t matter how useful and attractive your presentation is; you need to beautify your work with artistic effects.
One of these artistic effects is your tone and skills of rhetoric.
If you want to have a loud attractive voice, I suggest you read “how to improve your speaking voice?“.
Presentation software
To have an excellent performance, we usually use software, such as:
– PowerPoint
– Prezi
– Keynote (like PowerPoint but for MC)
Remember that the software has to help you in the presentation, not to take your place.
Organizing a presentation
I’ve said a million times:
Knowledge is no good without organization.
We have to have professional instruction for our presentations. It means we have to know our audience, how to persuade them, and what story-line we have to choose.
Before making your slides, ask yourself what your story is. From which part it starts? And when it has to end?
Prepared presentation! a ridiculous joke!
You have to create your slides and presentation to be successful.
Sadly, I saw some people looking for prepared presentations!
I need you to know this: you may have a successful speech when you buy a prepared one, but you won’t get anything in your real life because somethings are not purchasable in life!
Some points for presentations:
1- Ask and answer
2- Managing the time during the presentation
You have to know that ask and answers are critical in a presentation and you have to consider it and be ready for the audience’s questions and their answers.
You have to start at the exact time and continue managing it. Then end it in a specific time. If your presentation is more or less than the arranged time, the audience will get bored.
