Planning your presentation

Being invited to speak. Defining your audience. How to construct an exciting presentation. Differences between papers and presentations. Successful presentations for different audiences. Planning tips and techniques.

Making your presentation memorable.

What to say and how to say it. Choosing and using words for intellectual and emotional impact. Rhetorical devices. Adding richness to your presentation – visual, auditory, read/write and kinaesthetic. Special considerations for technical material. Communication styles.

Personal skills

Dealing with nerves. Voice, body language and visual appearance. Gestures. Managing difficult people. What to say in response to difficult questions.

Text slides and tables

Style and colour for fonts and bullets. Editing titles and devising new ones. How to reduce the amount of text on a slide. Ways of making text slides more interesting. Turning text into tables and graphics. Editing tables to make them more readable. Using abbreviations in text slides and tables. Highlighting key points.

Graphs and other figures

Types of data appropriate for line graphs. Line graphs – number of lines, styles and colours for lines and bullets. Using the graphing and drawing features in PowerPoint.  Types of data appropriate for bar charts. Number of bars, colours, outlines, subdivided bars, horizontal bars, 100% bars. Rules for 3-D bars and other effects. Types of data appropriate for pie charts. Number of slices, colours, cutting a slice and other effects. Photographs and other graphics.