Presentation tips?

[finlay666]

I have a presentation for my final year project this afternoon...

I have prepared it into a short powerpoint (5 slides) with demos and code examples in between (explaining issues, flaws, areas for improvement/further investigation)

I have checked it and come in a LOT under time (intentionally)

Is there much else I need to consider? I'll be doing it on my own laptop so ensuring everything runs fine together to avoid issues with other hardware.

On a side note, I'm noticing a lot of areas I could have improved on/done differently that I didnt do (variety of reasons)

[TheAnimus]

Depends on the nature of the presentation, but if people are asked to ask you questions, jot some of those thoughts down, no one will think less of someone who articuately states with hindsight, and the lessons learnt in preparing this work, xyz could be done abc.

if its a PPT, make sure your happy with presenter mode, don't forget the 'Cover Slides' ie the first one with you title, preface and you name / date / audience, and an any questions slide at the end. Don't be affriad to say at the start your taking questions at the end, politely reminding people not to interrupt you!

But in presenter mode, put lots of bullet point notes, all the content you didn't put in the slides. There is this theory I can't remember the name of, but in short its presentation slides should be short and sweet statements, you waffle elegantly with speach, the text is basic.

And good luck!

[Spud1]

How did you get on?

[Salazaar]

Bit late now but a good presentation should be a concise illustation of the points you're trying to get across and not just a repitition of what you're saying.

I've been to far too many where the speaker is just reading off whatever is on the slide, with either no explanation of the key points or the key points getting lost in a deluge of information. What's on the screen needs to be a framework for what is said.

And make sure you know your subject, nothing worse than an easy question you don't know the answer to. Though you'll usually be forgiven for not having an answer to a hard question straight away.

Anyway, how did it go Finlay?

[scaryjim]

... I'll be doing it on my own laptop so ensuring everything runs fine together to avoid issues with other hardware. ...

OK, You've already covered my hardware tip

The day I went to present my MSc project, the uni had just upgraded the clusters to new versions of everything, the additional install swamped my userspace (we got a measly 50MB!) and none of my code would run because there wasn't enough disk space to compile my java files. Had to go back and give it 2 days later, very stressed out, using my own laptop. So good man for that one