Revision as of 18:03, 13 July 2009

Presenting at the OpenOffice.org Conference

Few simple tips for better presentations

Introduction

• Not everyone speaks to an audience easily
• Or has much experience
• Or is native English speaker
• Therefore some simple tips that may help

• Not every item might be equally relevant for every room, presentation
• Presentations with extensive advice are available all over the net; here we just aim to give basic tips

Sound

• Before you start: check the microphone
  • Ask someone else: is the volume OK?
  • What distance to your mouth is best?
  • Microphone broken? Ask the organisation!
• Beginning your presentation
  • Ask the audience if they can hear you
• During the presentation
  • Mind volume and distance

Sight

• Where do you stand?
• Can people still see your slides?
• Can all people see you?
• Can you see the audience?

Contact

• Try to speak in the direction of the audience
• Try to look at various parts of the hall/room/group of people
• If you do not want to look at people straightly, you can look just over the heads

Slides – general

• Better is more slides with less info on a slide
• Do not read out your slides word for word - your audience can read :-)

Slides – technical presentations

• Little info/text often is no option
• Exact information is useful
• And needed for reading afterwards
• What can be done though:
• enlarging or highlighting part of the text
• add slides with highlights / summary

Answering questions

• Repeat the question, so that all attendees know what is asked
• Try to answer to the whole audience

Help from colleagues

• There are always colleagues around
• Ask one to help
• To bring the microphone to someone with a question
• ...