Welcome to the fourth part of this new “42 things” series – you can catch up from previous posts, starting here Giving Presentations, From An Audience Perspective.

Timing plays an important part in the planning and delivery of your presentation, and this timing can be impacted by a number of things including problems with demonstrations and your delivery style.

Think About Your Style

Give some thought to the style of your presentation, ask yourself:

• Do you like to use slides or do you prefer a minimalist slide presentation?
• Do you like to present to the audience or discuss with the audience?
• Do you feel more comfortable with practical demonstrations or talking about concepts?
• Do you like to move about or stand still?
• Do you like to make expressions with your hands or do you like to use a pointer?
• How long do you plan to talk for?
• Is your talk one long session or split into sections?

You could consider Pecha Kucha which is 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide. That is 400 seconds which gives you exactly 6 minutes 40 seconds for your presentation. You can read more about Pecha Kucha on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_Kucha

Go To Presentations

One of the best ways to learn how good (and bad!) presentations are carried out, and to pick up ideas and insights in what works and what doesn’t is to attend presentations. Watch the presenter and…

• See how they move around
• See how they keep the presentation on track and in time
• Watch how they interact with the audience
• How do you open their presentation?
• How do they close it?
• How do they get the message across?
• How do they handle questions?

Timing

We previously talked about rehearsing – decide upon your timing and stick to it. This is one reason not to memorise your slides; you may need to flexible with your delivery as interruptions, hesitations and clarifications all eat into your time. If you are starting to over-run then remember an earlier point we made and get to the point as soon as possible.

Practice Demonstrations Before The Presentation

If you have demonstrations ready then practice them – make sure they work. If they are computer based demonstrations take some screen shots of the demonstration, in operation, and keep them handy in another slide presentation just in case the actual demonstrations don’t work on the day. Demonstrations are great fun and sometimes even funnier when they don’t work as expected. However, for the presenter demonstrations can be very pressuring to do in real-time so be prepared and have a back-up plan just in case you have a few empty minutes to fill when things don’t go as planned. Try and have an interesting or funny story to help win the audience back over.

You Have Less Time Than You Think

Lets touch on timing once more. It’s amazing how time flies when you are giving a presentation. When rehearsing try and build in a window of time in case you get a little carried away, a question occurs or something unexpected happens. At best, finish earlier than expected or spend a little more time on screen demonstrations. Sometimes, less is more…

This article was brought to you by Jason Slater Technology Blog

Catch Up Posts…

• Giving Presentations, From An Audience Perspective
• Giving Presentations From An Audience Perspective #2
• Giving Presentations From An Audience Perspective #3

Previous 42 things…

• 42 things about Web 2.0
• 42 things to enhance and improve your network

To ensure you do not miss the next part in this series you should subscribe to our free feed,  Subscribe. If you are unsure what subscribing means, read this post: What you need to know about feeds