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Enhancing your presentations

I stumbled across this link when looking for something entirely different, and picked up some good hints and tips about presenting effectively.  i thought I'd share it with you in case you're the sort of person who has fear in your heart if you're asked to stand up and present...

10 tips to enhance presentations

To better engage your audience, follow leading communications consultant Cliff Atkinson's savvy tips for enhancing your presentation. Learn ways to interact with your audience so that your presentation is less of a lecture and more of a dialogue. Remove distractions that lessen the impact of your story, such as too many special effects in your slides, or equipment problems in your meeting room. Instead of all that glitz, learn innovative methods for focusing your ideas, coordinating spoken words with slide images, and creating an engaging narration.

And if you're an expert presenter..... do you want to share some tips?

Published Tuesday, May 31, 2005 6:27 PM by admin
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Comments

Thursday, June 02, 2005 8:35 AM by KevinRemde

# re: Enhancing your presentations

Audience engagement is HUGE in what we do. When you present as much as I do, you learn quickly how important it is to do a couple of things right up front:
1. Establish your credibility
2. Establish a rapport
3. Get them on the edge of their seats!

Credibility comes from allowing them to know you better; let them know that you have been in their shoes, and feel their pain around a particular topic, or even more generally.

The rapport comes when you quickly make them feel at ease with the interactive format. Without speaking it, set up the interactive "feel" for the session early, by asking easy questions, rewarding interaction, etc. Look 'em in the eye. Ask them their name - and use their name later if it's comfortable.

Getting them on the edge of their seats is really the magic of clearly defining the value proposition. Why are they here? ..you speak to them in their language about a problem that they have; some need.. "Don't you wish that instead of XYZ you were spending more time doing ABC?"... and then you have their attention, because you're there to tell them EXACTLY what they need to do to get to ABC.

I highly recommend Jerry Weissman's book, "Presenting to Win". The book is more geared to the creation of an engaging presentation, but there are a few good presentation skill tidbits in there.

http://www.presentingtowin.com/

-Kevin
Friday, June 03, 2005 2:22 PM by Eileen_Brown

# re: Enhancing your presentations

Kevin is an expert presenter - check out his webcasts and comments at: http://blogs.technet.com/kevinremde/archive/2005/04/27/404269.aspx His tips are all so valid when we're presenting regularly and need to get away from all of that stage fright.
He's got a sense of humour too.. http://blogs.technet.com/kevinremde/archive/2005/05/19/405172.aspx
Friday, June 03, 2005 4:54 PM by KevinRemde

# re: Enhancing your presentations

:) I bought that T-Shirt, by the way. I'm going to wear it on Monday at TechEd. (Under my "official" blue MS Employee Shirt, of course.)
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