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Present It Right...The First Time!

	PRESENTERS: MANAGE YOUR TIME INSTEAD OF WASTING IT
	PRESENTERS: HOW TO MAINTAIN INTEREST DURING A WEBCAST
	DESIGNERS:  HOW DO YOU CUT WORDS TO MAKE WAY FOR IMAGES?
	MONTHLY CHALLENGE

MANAGE YOUR TIME INSTEAD OF WASTING IT

Here's how to prepare to give a presentation and maintain your sanity and your exercise schedule while getting your work done.

First, write up what you want to accomplish with your talk. Fill in the blanks:
1. My objective for the talk is ____________.
2. Three key messages I want to get across are ____________.
3. The underlying theme of my talk will be ____________.
4. I want my audience to say ____________ when I'm done.
5. I want my audience to feel ____________when I'm done.
6. I want my audience to do ____________ when I'm done.
Now you have a foundation to build on.

Second, divide up the specific tasks for your talk and schedule them. Work backwards to schedule. On September 23 I gave a talk at an Investor Relations Conference in Mexico. Because I had other commitments the week of Sept 15, I had to get most of the work done before that date. Here's how my schedule looked

By Aug 15: Assemble slides to redo for the presentation. I need to find a participant who is attending and ask if I can redo his or her Investor Relations Presentation. I will use this redone presentation to show effective and ineffective slides. This usually takes the longest so I'll do it first.
By Sept 1: Redo slides of the participant's presentation and get approval from him to use them. This was very important, as the slides would be in Spanish.
By Sept 8: Now organize the slides for my talk. Put my slides together so I can easily cut slides if need be. Many times at conferences you are not given the time allotted.
By Sept 15: Practice out loud to be sure the presentation is the right length. Often at conferences the presenter gets less time, not more, so make one talk for 45 minutes and the other for 30.
By Sept 19: Make back-up copies to take with me.
Sept 22: Practice one more time in my room the night before the talk.
Sept 23: Arrive early to set up my laptop in the room.

Third, make the titles for your slides before you put in the details. Be sure you like the structure before you spend time on the slides.

For this talk and others, I practiced effective time management principles by breaking a presentation into small, manageable tasks. I planned so there would be leeway in case I fell behind or met an unexpected obstacle.

When I work with clients, I plan out a schedule as much as possible. If I don't, I end up working too many nights and weekends. This still happens, but much less with a schedule. I love the clients who want to get a presentation done a week ahead of time! We should all try to do that. Life would be calmer and you would enjoy giving your presentation for a change-as you would be well rested, with plenty of time to practice.

HOW TO MAINTAIN INTEREST DURING A WEBCAST

These ideas may sound simple, but I hear so many stories of disregarding these simple behaviors during a webcast or a conference call. Even more on the web, the key to maintaining interest is to change the pace with words, slides, and data.

Talk loud enough and emphasize key words. Don't talk in a monotone. Pause between your thoughts. Practice out loud and tape yourself. Then ask, "Would this voice tone keep someone's interest?" Insert some emotion in your voice when you talk.

Use phrases that acknowledge the presence of your audience.

• "As you see on this chart..."
• "You've probably experienced this issue."
• "Now as you look at the slide title...." This tells them where to look if they are clicking the slides themselves.
• "What this means for you is..."or "How you can use this information in the future is..."
• "I am showing you this information to..."
• "In conclusion, the three messages you can take away from this webex are..."

Ask questions.
You can make your questions rhetorical, targeted to one group in your audience, or general. Ask a question that isn't answered on the slide so the audience will want to pay attention and hear your answer.

Vary your PowerPoint slides.
Don't make all slides look the same. Nothing is more boring than 10 slides all with sentences in size 16 font. The listener will read the slide quickly and then do something else. To maintain interest, use bright images, short video clips, interesting photos, or a totally different look to change the pace and wake your listeners up.

Plan places to capture your listeners' attention.
At the beginning, tell your audience three benefits of listening to you. As you cover each of these points, remind them how many key points you have made. You can surprise listeners with something unexpected, such as an interesting fact or statistic. Or offer to send them x when they do y.

Intermix stories with your data.
Look at your slides and plan places to tell a story or give an example that will interest your audience. Tell stories about real situations and people if you can.

Create conflict.
Show some information that you know some people in the group just won't believe. This will make them sit up and take notice. There are many interesting sources of little-known facts that you can incorporate into your talk

Use humor.
But only use humor if you are that type of person. If you have never told a joke in your life, please don't try it on a webex. And if you do tell a joke make sure it passes all the tests: not prejudicial, sexist, racist, targeted at a group, or inappropriate for a business setting.

 HOW DO YOU CUT WORDS TO MAKE WAY FOR IMAGES?

1. Omit repeated words on a slide.
2. Use a table for comparisons to omit repeated words.
3. Delete adverbs and adjectives, such as "really" and "very."
4. Omit non-impact words, especially in titles, such as: "that," "while," and "but."
5. Omit needless phrases: "estimate" for "give an estimate," "to" for "in order to," "tell" instead of "give you information."
6. Use shorter works: "ride" instead of "transportation," "hot" instead of "intense."

These are slides done by Julie Terberg of Terberg Designs. Julie is a fantastic designer. She is offering a two-day workshop on animation... all you need to know to create effective, eye-catching, relevant animations. At the end of my bulletin there is an explanation of her workshop.

Go to www.terbergdesign.com/animate/ to download the file titled: TerbergDesign_anim.zip then you will see the slide designs animated.

DESIGNERS
Keep cutting words on slides.

ANIMATION WORKSHOP FROM JULIE TERBERG

I have been working with Julie Terberg, a leading presentation designer. She presented again this year at the PowerPoint Live Conference. Julie is a fantastic designer and PowerPoint expert. Here is her announcement about her latest workshop.

Learn How To Animate With Finesse

Have you been struggling to understand PowerPoint 2003's Custom Animation tools? Still using simple wipes and fly-ins? Are you interested in taking your presentations to a whole new level so you can tell a story and not just have all the information on the slide at one time?

Here is what you will get from this one-of-a-kind 2-day workshop.

This is for: presentation designers who want a hands-on workshop.
What you need to bring: laptop and slides you want to animate.
What you'll be able to do when you leave:
Apply the new Custom Animation Effects in PowerPoint 2003.
Create animations that really get the audience's attention.
Use all sorts of tips and tricks for working more efficiently with PowerPoint.
Impress all those people who you make presentations for.
What this course is not: basic how-to-use-PowerPoint course.
Download a preview at: www.terbergdesign.com/animate/
Location and dates: to be announced.
Interested in attending Please email Julie at info@terbergdesign.com
Interested in hosting a workshop: Julie will customize a session for your company.

What people said about her last workshop:

"I learned so much at the class ...and will be able to apply the techniques to various projects I'm working on. "L" and I incorporated a few tricks we learned into our Walgreens project!

Thanks again for sharing your unbelievable knowledge with us!"