The Nightmare of a Speaker: Presentation Blunders

Not everyone is born to be a successful orator, and getting acquainted to the principles of this wonderful art can sometimes raise difficulties. Either they result from psychological tension caused by pressure or merely from lack of interest, most common blunders in public speaking can blow away the true meaning and charm of a well-written speech with constructive ideas.

This is why we should take note of these common presentation errors and avoid turning public speaking into a true nightmare, so we could spare us the worries and embrace success in everything we do.

Death by PowerPoint

Nevertheless, technology has brought valuable improvements to the world of business and presentations, as it offers useful visual support and makes your message easier to understand by keeping your audience entertained. However, the countless benefits of this software could only be signs of good luck if you know how to effectively use them. Don’t forget PowerPoint is there to improve your presentation where necessary and not to entirely replace you. If loaded with information, slideshows become repulsive to your audience from the first glance: nobody will pay attention to intricate pieces of info clustered into a single place. Remember this advice and use straightforward, simple notions to fill in the slides. They only have to resume the main ideas in your speech and help the audience keep them in mind. Never choose to entirely focus on a PowerPoint presentation!

This also applies to speech notes. There are speakers constantly reading their notes and therefore forgetting about eye contact, a vital part to meeting the target of the presentation! Most of these speakers also tend to turn PowerPoint slideshows into virtual speech notes and kill their presentation twice!

The Defensive Speaker

The attitude of the speaker, as well as his presence are elements with a drastical influence to the overall impact of his speech. This is a quite delicate situation, as it sometimes refers to an issue mostly depending on psychological matters.

A nervous speaker is most likely to be rigid and avoid eye contact with the audience. The speech becomes tedious and all members of the audience will only wish for the presentation to end sooner. They will feel ignored and have the impression they landed in the wrong place. Murmur would probably be their desperate way of letting you know that.

Stage Fright or Simply Careless?

A well-prepared speech gathers the attention of the audience from the very beginning. A weak, poorly motivated opening betrays a lack of confidence in your own speech and even make the strength of your arguments diminish in the eyes of the audience, as no interest would be risen from your behalf in the first place. What’s more, it is scientifically proven the first 90 seconds are vital to one’s first impression when meeting another for the first time. Why wouldn’t that apply to presentations too? So remember to always draw attention with a catchy opening.

I Happens to Have Came in Front of You Today…

This is the most painful experience a speech could ever offer its audience. Incoherence and poor language are never tolerated in the world of oratory. You should have flawless knowledge of language and vocabulary and master the art of phrases in order to keep your audience entertained and prove your point!

Ummm… errrr…

It sometimes happens to genuinely run out of ideas or simply forget, for a few seconds, what is that you wanted to say. It is better for you to keep a few moments of complete silence instead of filling in the gaps with “ummm” and “errrrr”. They disrupt the natural flow of your ideas and annoy the members of your audience by forcing them to repeatedly lose focus and focus again. Make speech notes to ensure your fluency and rely on in case this ever happens, it is natural.

Bond. Audience Bond.

Last, but not least, do keep in mind to always connect to the audience. People value emotions and are more likely to genuinely welcome your message if you also rely on empathy. No one will have any memory of a distant speaker, as these speakers tend to keep their speeches distant as well. However, be careful not to exaggerate with connecting!

How to Make Presentations Without PowerPoint

In these days, most of the presentations are made by a powerful tool called PowerPoint. In addition, there are lecturers and teachers who use this tool to make the learning process and teaching more interesting. However, there are some people making their presentations without using such tool.

Without PowerPoint, presentations can be quite boring. The reason is that they will be monotonous without any visual aid and music background. Presentations with PowerPoint usually provide the audience with a change in the presentation, and additionally provide the crowd with some explanations visually to the points being told. So without PowerPoint, the presentation requires the presenter to use his or her creativity. The reason is that the creativity is the only technique to keep the audience motivated and interested in the presentation!

The most important thing to be kept in mind to make a successful presentation without the help of PowerPoint is to know exactly what to talk about. If you are the matter of the issues intended to present, you will present it very well without PowerPoint. However, you should ensure making your presentation after you have learned about the nature and temperament of your audience.

At the beginning of your presentation, you need to present it and keep the end of your presentation in mind at the same time. You should know what your presentation talks about, because you may lose the audience’s interest without PowerPoint! Whatever you say, you should ensure seeing, hearing and feeling exactly what you want them to respond to. Make a strong beginning to the presentation. It is essential that your appearance and first words should be interesting enough to keep your audience glued to you listing. One of the most effective techniques to make a connection with your audience is to tell them a story or a universal appeal anecdote.

It is necessary to use props in a presentation without PowerPoint. The reason is that props are basically worth more than a thousand words. With such props, the audience tends to anchor their thoughts to these props. It makes no difference if the prop is serious or funny, small or large as long as it really relates to what you are trying to talk about and the audience can see it! Another technique to ensure that your audience loves you and your presentation although you do not use PowerPoint is to bring answers to the questions they have. As regards the audience, you can have a general idea of what their questions are; it is all dependent on you as it comes to bringing new ideas to your audience to try.

Keep in mind that because you do not use PowerPoint, you are just the visual aid and sound effect of your own presentation. People will get more interest in whatever you say, instead of overheads, visuals or fancy slides. So essentially, it is important for you as a speaker to be more well-versed and self-confident in your speech without PowerPoint.

5 Keys to Creating a Successful 3D Presentation

PowerPoint presentations, effective as they were in the past, are slowly being pushed out of the picture as people turn to more advanced methods of creating powerful presentations. Enter the 3D presentations. 3D presentation is much more illustrative and interesting; two very important keys in the delivery of a powerful presentation. So how can you build your own powerful 3D presentation that will interest and engage your audience? Below are five key factors that must be considered if you are to create a riveting 3D presentation;

1) Choosing the right tools; to create a 3D presentation, you are going to need some special tools such as 3D generation software. There are many such software available out there ranging from highly specialized software that require in depth understanding of popular programming languages to simple yet powerful software that do not require a single line of code and which can be used by virtually anyone. In choosing the software to use, consider the following;

- Can you use it? If you are not proficient in programming, you had better go for software that does not need any coding.

- Hardware requirements; do you have the hardware (such as enough RAM) to use the software effectively?

2) Developing a suitable storyline; you must have some storyline covering the entire presentation. The storyline, in this respect is a narrative of the flow of ideas that will be represented within the 3D presentation that you want to create. It is important to have a clear storyline before you even begin creating the presentation. When creating the storyline, ensure the following;

- It should be interesting; 3D presentations on even the most boring of topics can be brought to life through the use of an interesting storyline. It does not necessarily have to be entertaining (although that would be a plus if you can make it happen), but it has to be good enough to keep your audience interested throughout.

- Make it concise; a very broad storyline easily could lose your audience before they get to the end of the presentation.

3) Highlighting takeaways; in this context, the takeaways refer to the most important bits of information that you want your audience to get out of the presentation. You can’t expect them to remember everything you present so ensure that more emphasis is laid squarely on the most important sections of your presentation. The best way to do this is by identifying such sections right after you finish developing your storyline.

4) Differentiating yourself; even though you might be several presenters and all of you use the same software to make your presentations, there are many ways through which you can make yours different from the rest. You can do this by exploring all the tools within the 3D presentation software that you are using and not just the most basic tools.

5) Simplicity; great graphics are a powerful addition to your presentation, but they should be added cautiously otherwise they could make your presentation appear crowded or make it confusing and hard for your audience to follow.