Thing 20: Presentations

Thing 20: Presenting...

I decided when trying to put together a presentation to use Google Slides as I had never used it before nor to be truthful even heard of it.  

Google really have an amazing suite of products that they have developed for the user.  I found Slides easy to use and it great that you don’t even have to go saving your presentation in a file.  It is all there as you left it the next time you log in.

Presentations are quite difficult to get right.  We all know when we have seen a good one but it is very hard to pull off ourselves.  It is the alchemy of content, speaker, occasion and timing.

With the best will in the world, some people just are not good, engaging speakers while other presenters might have poor content but due to force of personality or charisma can get away with it.

There were some great tips in the blog about doing presentations. 

It is important to know your audience and not get too hung up on the actual slides when giving the presentation.  We have all been at presentations where the speaker has been completely thrown by technical hitches.  Another thing I hate at presentations is when people just read from their slides.  We can all read so reading along with a presentation is just a waste of time.   

Having said all that, standing in a room full of your peers or your managers is a daunting thing and it takes time to feel comfortable giving presentations. It is not something that everybody has a natural talent for but knowing your topic takes some of the stress out of it.  Technical things can always go wrong but if you at least know what you want to say, you should be okay.

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