Last Friday I gave a presentation in front of about 30 people. I generally make it a habit to not prepare for presentations like these. I’ve always believed that I’m at my best when I just wing it. Completely illogical, but oh-so-convenient. This time, I decided to inconvenience myself and actually prepare what I wanted to say. I put together a little powerpoint presentation and outlined some important points on a scrap piece of paper. When I got the the hotel, I practiced my talk out loud in my room and even went to bed early. The result?
I sucked. Not completely, and not spectacularly, but I sucked nonetheless. It wasn’t that I didn’t know my stuff or that I wasn’t excited about talking about it, it was that I felt extreme pressure for having practiced in the first place. Normally I can say to myself, oh well, that was pretty good for winging it. This time, no such luck.
One good thing is now that I’ve actually tried to do well, and didn’t succeed to the point I had hoped, I’m determined to do better. While I was prepping for my talk, I found a really cool site called Presentation Zen, written by Garr Reynolds. He’s got a lot of really good content, including presentation tips broken out under:
Organization and Prep Tips
Delivery Tips
Slide Tips
It’s too late for me this time, but you can be sure I’ll use these tips for my next presentation.
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