1. Relax

This is both a mental and physical tip. It’s very difficult to relax, especially when you’re about to get in front of a group of co-workers and give a presentation on a certain topic. The stakes may be high, but emanating anxiety will not only affect you, but it’ll also make everyone in the room uncomfortable. Before going up, try breathing exercises to relax you and take some of the tension off by getting to know some people in the room.

Project relaxation by having a relaxed demeanor. That doesn’t necessarily mean slouching or leaning on things, but you shouldn’t lock your knees or have an excessively tense stance.

2. Position yourself in an open and inviting way

If you close your arms while giving a presentation, it gives the appearance that you’re closing yourself off and trying to make yourself small. Instead, stand on both legs and keep your arms uncrossed. Make sure your position is outward rather than inward facing.

3. Eye contact

If you ask anyone what the best thing to do when giving a speech, they’ll likely say eye contact. This is absolutely true. Eye contact helps establish a bond between you and the audience. If you’re talking to a big room, you obviously can’t make eye contact with everyone, but it is possible to look in the general vicinity of people, so they think you’re looking at them. If you’re uncomfortable looking people in the eyes, looking at their face around their nose also gives the perception you’re looking at their eyes.

4. Smile

Smiling is a great friend of the presentation. You obviously don’t want to smile throughout a presentation on the alarming trend of unemployment, but something as easy as a smile at the start of your presentation will warm up the audience. A smile is inviting and engaging.

5. Let your personality shine through

When you give a presentation you don’t want to be someone you’re not. If your co-workers know you, they will automatically think you’re not acting normal and may get distracted by your behavior. Let your personality shine through. If you’re shy don’t feel obligated to be overly gregarious. Instead, use your quiet and sly humor to add more to the presentation. Remember, the more you allow yourself to shine, the more comfortable you’ll be.

About the Author: Tim Martinez is a freelance writer and blogs about a number of subjects, including speeches, waterproof picnic blankets and throwing knives.

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1. 5 Things To Do Before Your Presentation

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1. Make sure the main idea of your presentation is clear

The last thing you want to do is go into your presentation feeling unsure whether your main purpose is clear. You should consider this, of course, after you’ve completed your presentation, but before the day you have to give it. A way to find out if you are presenting a clear idea is to try summarizing your main thesis in a sentence. If you’re finding that it is too long or complicated, chances are your audience will also find it confusing. So, before you have to give the presentation, changes a few things around.

2. Practice the presentation

In the run up to the day you have to give the presentation, practice it a few times to yourself or a family member. The point of this is not necessarily to make you are more comfortable with the presentation (though that’s definitely a plus) but to eliminate any awkward or unclear portions. If you realize that a slide or sentence doesn’t make sense, alter it.

3. Make sure you’re well rested

Getting a good night’s rest is integral to giving a solid performance. The more tired you are, the less engaging, quick and responsive you’ll be. You also don’t want to do anything to throw off your regular sleeping patterns or your whole day could be ruined.

4. Eat breakfast

On the morning of the presentation, eat breakfast. Like your mom used to tell you, breakfast is the most important meal of the day because it gives you a much-needed boost of energy to start the day. Without breakfast, you will feel sluggish and tired. However, if you’re not used to eating a giant breakfast, the morning of your presentation is not a time to start. Eat what you normally do so you don’t throw off your stomach.

5. Arrive really early

Finally, get to your presentation early. What ruins most presentations is the presenter’s inability to get the technology working. Get to the room well in advance, so you can get the help you need if your Powerpoint doesn’t seem to be starting up. Doing these 5 things before your presentation will give you the confidence you need to succeed.

About the Author: Tim Martinez is a freelance writer who blogs for a variety of people, including a local Casa Grande Bankruptcy Attorney.

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Here’s the synopsis of Noteberg’s talk about the famous Italian timeboxing method:

“You have so much you need to accomplish today. Your list is a mile long and you find yourself getting interrupted every other minute. You’d like to tell everyone to leave you alone, but most of the interruptions are coming from you! You think of a phone call you need to make or a web site you need to check and before you know it you’re answering email, checking twitter, and finding a million other things to occupy your time.

You need to focus – really focus.

The Pomodoro Technique puts you back in charge of your day. You’ll apply successful techniques from software engineering to identify what you should be doing today and to help you achieve your goals. Your mind won’t wander when it is fully engaged in short bursts of focused activity.”

Source: Parleys.com

Learn to work less and accomplish more using nothing more than paper, pencil, and a simple kitchen timer.

If you’re new about Pomodoro technique – read more about it here.

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Like most forms of communications, branding of your product will only be successful if the communication process can reach the intended target audience. PowerPoint presentations can be a great way of getting your message across but whether it can be achieved or not will depend not only on the design of the slides but also the person that is presenting them.

As such it is important that research is done after all it is your brand that you want to talk about, so who better to do it then yourself. Know everything that is there to know about your brand before you go out to present and try to predict the questions that your audience might have on their mind so that you can answer them, the last thing you want to do is fumble in front of your audience as this may be perceived negatively.

You might feel a little nervous at first but try to remain focus and channel that nervousness it something more productive. As mentioned earlier no matter how well you have designed your slides, it will fail to deliver its intended message if the speaker is not capable of doing it.

No matter how long you have done this, it is advisable that you do not get over-confident with yourself. This basically means that you should practice and not take anything for granted, look through the slides and make sure that it flows well with your presentation. If you feel that there are slides to add or you want to remove them then follow your instinct, the important thing is that you are comfortable with what you are doing and is able to effectively communicate your brand.

No one is perfect but everyone is capable of improving themselves, so if you feel that your presentation is not achieving the desired objectives then take pointers from those that are successful in what they are doing and the best examples are people such as Steve Jobs and Lawrence Lessig. Without a doubt you can find videos upon videos of the people mentioned earlier, so your job right now is to study them, see how they present their brand to the masses, once you have done that then take your time to digest it and create a distinct presentation style of your own. After all they must be doing something right if their brands are one of the most recognizable images in the world.

If you are unsure whether your presentation slides are doing what it’s supposed to then what you can do is test it out first. Obviously the people you choose should not be connected to you in anyway, what you want are feedback to see whether your brand has been successful in being communicated to them. If not then it is back to the drawing boards to think of a new strategy or rather back to the computer to create better slides or improve on the original ones. However if you feel that what you have can be used then take them to the clients and present to them your brand and make it a memorable one.

Picture courtesy of cloneofsnake

Danny Lau is a freelance writer who covers myriad topics including finance and careers. He’s currently a guest contributor for Mindshortcut.

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Keeping your power point slides to a manageable size is a good idea as you will be able to edit and run the slides smoothly during your presentation. The last thing you want is for the slides to hang in the middle of a presentation or a meeting. You can avoid such problems from occurring by using smaller sized picture, compressing large file types and using features that you can originally find in the PowerPoint applications such as charts and diagrams.

Other feature that you can benefit from is the “align or distribute” tool which can be used to arrange the items in your slides. With just a click you can achieve this and you won’t have to go through the hassle of nudging the objects until you tire your eyes. This particular tool can be selected from the “draw” menu. Besides this you can also use the ‘guides’ to space and align the objects, the guides can be utilized to measure the distance as well as maintain the position of the elements across multiple slides.

Should you desire greater accuracy in what you are seeing then you can use the zoom function. Just select the object which you intend to zoom on before changing the settings on the Standard toolbar, this step will help you eliminate the process of trial and error.

If you are sending the presentation slides through email and want the recipient of the slides to see to what you want them to see, then you can try to save it as a Slide Show. So when your recipient receives the file it will automatically open in slide show view. To do this you will need to go to “file” and click on “save as”; here click on the PowerPoint show. Another great way to save time and stress is to package your presentation slides onto a CD (a feature which can also be found on the PowerPoint application).

Here you will be able to run the presentation including all the linked files for any recipient that has a copy of the CD, besides this another great feature is that even though the recipient’s computer does not have PowerPoint it will still be able to run the slides.

Using Masters can help you save time and maintain a consistency throughout your slides. You can achieve this by placing the intended elements on the Slide Master, which will result in it being automatically appeared on the slide layouts. However if you wish to hide certain elements from certain slides you can still do so. Making your slides consistent is a great way to promoting your brand or logo as your clients or audience member will be able to recognize it after the first few slides (but make sure you have something that is worth remembering).

Picture courtesy of dantaylor

Danny Lau is a freelance writer who covers myriad topics including finance and careers. He’s currently a guest contributor for Mindshortcut.

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There is no need to get into the advanced level of creating effective PowerPoint slides.

Here are the main points that I’ve highlighted in this “How to Create Professional PowerPoint Presentation Slides Even If You’re a Beginner” 10-Page mini-booklet including the ideal ways of:

• Presenting your title on your slide
• Choosing bullets
• Creating Non-Bulleted Slides
• Putting the right picture
• Placing your text
• Resizing your picture

You would probably need less than 10 minutes to finish reading this booklet.

Get your free copy of “How to Create Professional PowerPoint Presentation Slides Even If You’re a Beginner 10-Page Booklet” here.

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If you’ve a meeting or discussion after Thanksgiving, it’s wisely to allocate some time on your slide preparation.

Here are some recommended books as your guidance on how to enhance your slide presentation:

1. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
2. slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations
3. Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® 2007 to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire
4. The Exceptional Presenter: A Proven Formula to Open Up and Own the Room
5. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience

Enjoy your reading and Happy Thanksgiving!

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If you want to create simple and efficient slides – it would take longer time to complete depending how many slides you need to include in your presentation.

You can actually prepare your slides fast and avoid losing your temper – it’s all about strategy.

How do you actually do it?

Step 1: Gather all your resources and tools before you start creating slides

How could you possibly start a task if you don’t have a proper guidance or reference materials? It’s like climbing a mountain – you have to be well-equipped (i.e. bringing along tools like head gear, climbing shoes, ropes, and other climbing paraphernalia).

I have some basic tools for my slide preparation:

• Flickr’s Advance Search Tool – You can “steal” images that belong to Flickr users that are protected by Creative Commons license. By using this feature, you can find content to use commercially or modify, adapt or build upon. You have to attribute the work of the owner as specified by the licensor.

For example, I’m searching for pictures related to “presentation” by using Flick’s Advanced Search.

Then, I’ll scroll down the page and check the radio buttons as shown above.

• Multiple tabs feature (Mozilla Firefox or IE8) – At this feature, you can view multiple web pages when you’re performing content research.

  
  Limit yourself by using up to 6-8 tabs within one internet browser. By using this tab feature, you’ll be able to scheme through different articles or web pages rather than having multiple tabs at the taskbar. You can also leave those multiple tabs untouched when you turn off Mozilla Firefox browser – read more about it here.

Step 2: Increase your productivity by setting your goals in advance

You can set your goals based on this method – How to Create Your Own Four-Quadrate Weekly Goal Plan. You can change the duration into forty minutes, four hours, four day and etc (make sure it able to be divided equally into four quadrates).

Step 3: Promoting visual thinking in your slides

Promoting visual thinking is by using less text and inserting related images in your presentation slides (read this post: Visual Thinking – Create your own Drawing in your Decision Making Process). You can create images on your own – by drawing on post pads or blank paper. You can scan your drawings and save it into your computer, so that you can insert it into your slides.

Bear in mind that your drawings have to be simple and clear. You can also use additional shapes like arrows or text boxes from Microsoft PowerPoint software to enhance your drawings. You can get some ideas about drawing simple diagrams here.

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As I said earlier, this title is quite misleading. It doesn’t mean that you have to be a clown and make fun of yourself. Every presentation slide has a point or information that need to be transcended in a jovial manner without offending your audience. Most people would accept sarcastic way of delivering your ideas if you’re able to simplify some certain messages that your audience can hardly understood.

Last Saturday, I attended a public forum at a hospital regarding latest development in Neurosurgery. It was conducted by a panel of neurosurgeons (or Consultant Neurosurgeons) and they spoke specific topics that were technical and hardly perceived by some attendees (presumably those who are not familiar to Biological Science). I’ve no doubt that these neurosurgeons able to elaborate information about their field of study. I hadn’t seen anyone walked out from the hall when neurosurgeons were presenting their slides.

The layouts of the slides are very simple:

• Basically they were using simple PowerPoint slide templates with light or white colored background.
• Most of the important points were arranged in bullets
• Size of the fonts are viewable to the audience
• They inserted related images like neurosurgery microscopes , devices and other related apparatus

I’m not going to elaborate much on the contents of their presentations. There was one particular neurosurgeon who spoke sarcastically during his presentation. He made fun of a sub particular topic that some listeners hardly understood.

He was able to attract his audience because of the following traits:

• Self-discipline: He was well prepared for his presentation and improvised his speech. He was able to conclude his presentation within given time frame.
• Body language: No exaggerate arm movements when he was explaining his points.
• Outgoing: Using too much medical terms and any technical jargons could possibly turn off the audience’s attention. Other than that, he sarcastically gave examples that the audience can relate. Never intend to make sarcastic remarks on the audience as it could cause dissatisfaction among listeners.

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