CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, September 17, 2014

The 8 Must-Have Elements to Make Your Presentation Rock

www.entrepreneur.com: Being selected as a subject-matter expert presenter can be high praise. However, you need to do well because your reputation—and your company’s reputation—is on the line.

Whether you’re presenting in person or online, follow these steps to keep your audience’s attention and avoid the far off, unfocused sea of eyes in the room -- or worse, the people that "slyly" duck out (yet everyone notices).

7 comments:

Olivia LoVerde said...

Presentations can be so hard to give and even harder to sit through. Finding a way to make them more enjoyable for both parties is not easy. I think the suggestions of this article are definitely good. The idea of making the presentation like a story will one hundred percent keep people more interested and make giving it a ton easy. Instead of just reading off a list of things you have a fun way to share what you need. Including the audience in what you are doing is also a genius idea. As an audience member you will get bored easily if you are just being talked to but if you are an active participant chances of being bored will be way less. Take the time to think about presentations so you and the audience can have a good time and stay informed.

Paula Halpern said...

The advice presented in this article is infinitely helpful when it comes to networking and presenting projects. The step that really stood out to me was step seven: Have Passion. My favorite piece of advice to give to fellow actors and designers is that whatever you are working on at that moment (whether it be a show or a project of something else) while you are working on it, that project officially becomes your favorite thing.

This is really important when it comes to presenting on some topic or on some work you've done. When you are doing a presentation, even if it is the most boring thing in the world; in that moment, it is your favorite topic.

Unknown said...

I think the elements listed here are all valid. For some reason while I was reading this, I thought about a teacher talking to a class. So I quickly made the connection that a hug part of teaching is presenting. Good teachers involve their students (Q&A, live question polls) and they also prepare for hours on a 40 minute lecture. They make it entertaining and informative (visual media and passion). I also highly agree with the idea of starting with a story. People listening want to know that you have feelings and act like they do. Spewing information at an audience is not nearly as effective as talking with an audience.

Monica Skrzypczak said...

This is really good advice. All of these are things that, when I think about it, were in all the presentations that I actually remember. Speaking naturally is one of the hardest things for me to do. Its hard to always remember to add in little colloquialisms to make it sound like you aren't a robot.
It's also difficult at first to include a video because you don't want to detract from what you want to say or you don't want to look like you just aren't trying, but I can see how videos really help. People expect videos to be less personal and more informational (because videos can't take the time to get personal with the audience... well unless, of course, its like a confessional video or something similar) so it makes you be more personal and less robotic with your talk because if the video is more personal than you, you know you are boring.

Jess Bergson said...

As I was reading this article, I couldn't help but think that all of the points the author makes are complete common sense. However, when I took a step back, I realized that, as theater people, we SHOULD be skilled with giving (and receiving) presentations. While this certainly is not the case for every single person in the School of Drama, it is true for most. I think this article could, for our purposes, be titled "How to Prepare A Successful Crit." When preparing crits, everyone thinks about the tips this author is giving, whether subconsciously or not. I do think the tip to start off your presentation with a story is a great tip that I do not see often amongst my peers, and sometimes even my professors. The trick is to be able to tell a story to get your audience captivated, without it seeming like an irrelevant tangent. Overall, all of these tips are helpful to follow, especially for people who are new to giving presentations.

Thomas Ford said...

Why couldn't I have read this a few weeks ago when I had to present the Gaia hypothesis in Mallards vs. Mallets. Actually, this would of been really handy last year in Foundations II when there were class presentations literally every day. Some of the advice is obvious and I already knew about it, but the examples given and the briefness with which they were given just made the points that much more clear. Watching presentations in class I'm always seeing issues with tiny things like distracting backgrounds and animations. I really liked what the author had to say about starting off with an anecdote, and the speak naturally thing is really important. Just about every time I finish a presentation I think back and realize that I didn't feel that it was me that I just gave it. Of course, I'm worried if I try to change it that I'm just going to end up going all King's Speech. Hopefully one day I'll become more comfortable with presenting, and when that happens I'll definitely be keeping some of these tips in mind.

Sabria Trotter said...

Presentations are extremely difficult to give. I find it hard to be both personable and informative at the same time. I thought that these tips were extremely helpful because they were geared towards keeping people engaged in your topic. Adding a relevant personal story to a presentation always helps me relate to my audience better. I also like adding videos or cool graphics to my slideshows because some people are more visual learners. Taking the time to make presentations more engaging and passionate, makes them more valuable for both the audience and the presenter.