Thursday, October 28, 2010

About presentations

It was 9.45pm when I got home last night. The mail pouch (a cloth bag with 3 pouches for my father to separate the mail among my siblings) held an envelope for me. My first thought was "Oh, a card from Clarinda!" I'm not sure what gave me that idea but anyway, when I opened it, the front said "Just wondering... ever u dream of 'someone' to walk hand in hand?" So my next thought was, oh, this is a wedding invitation. And when I opened the card, I just smiled cos it's one those no-rhyme-or-reason card that he sends like once in 6 months? Haha. Anyway, I totally did not understand the front page of the card. It totally needs grammar restructuring to become "Just wondering, have you ever dreamt of 'someone' to walk hand in hand with?" I'm not sure why the word someone has inverted commas though.

I put the picture above on Facebook and got 10 "likes". Gestures of love never fail to make people smile. Josh did say he felt violated cos some parts of the text was in the picture. Haha.

Anyway, now's the time for presentations. After 8 semesters in SMU, this is my 9th, I've seen plenty of presentations. To me, in a business setting, the best kind of presentations are one which speakers are well-prepared, do not hold cue cards unless there's a good amount of data, speak spontaneously, good flow of presentaion and SIMPLE slides. I mean, slides that have minimal animation, just key words, clear and good fonts, and clean template. If you're a real slick speaker, you can pull off with white and plain slides, really!

The hardest parts of multi-speakers presentation is that the changing speakers do break the flow of presentation, a good handover from speaker is crucial. Another one is flow of presentation. As presenters, definitely the info and meanings are good in your head, but often the audience needs to be pointed out the important explanations. When you jump from one point to another without fully showing the relationships of your information, your audience is left confused and forced to make sense of your presentation. But the hardest hardest thing is the speaker him/her-self. Let's face it, not everyone is a Steve Jobs or a professional motivational speaker. We like to think we are, but even the most out-spoken and confident amongst us would tend to lose focus in a presentation simply from the lack of practice. I'm not talking about lack of practice of your speech but simply, as students, it's not our job to face people as a presenter daily. Professional speakers do that all the time, and they naturally get better.

As student presenters, we need a different strategy. For example, know your audience well. These classmates have been with you for 10 weeks, use that to your advantage! Speak to them student-to-student, of course armed with a lot more knowledge, but don't pretend you're a professional, just someone who has done his or her homework. Create opportunities for interaction, throw out rhetorical or simple questions just to keep them on their toes. Basically, do not pretend you don't know your classmates, where they're from and assume they will be listening hard to your presentation.

Just give me 2 more minutes, I wanna highlight the importance of first and last speaker. First speaker needs to set the tone and energy of the presentation. You excite your audience about your topic, why's important and usually, you'll be the one giving the background information. You make sure why they should listen and you have to be a bit drama to get them to focus. The last speaker needs to be very attentive to the audience throughout the presentation. He or she needs to watch out for audience reactions as they listen to 2nd and 3rd speaker cos usually these are data information. Sometimes, due to fatigue or simply bad presentation skills, the audience is simply not getting it. The last speaker needs to reconcile that understanding in an impromptu summary, if needed, before diving straight into the conclusion. And that's why the last speaker needs to be extra clear and confident.

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