Tips to Making a Great Presentation

I gave a talk at Los Alamos National Labs this week. After the talk, I received really nice and specific compliments about the talk. I’m not the best speech giver, but I try really hard to make things interesting to the audience. Here are some of the things they said they liked:

• I opened with two short stories about our startup that made a personal connection:  1) shared the story of our founding, 2) shared the story of how our people were surviving the crazy Atlanta ice storm, including my picture of my makeshift bed from the night before.
• I shared some information that I had never shared outside our company before. And I told them they were the first to hear it. They liked that.
• I used a short video with great sound quality.
• At the start, I probed the audience to understand who was attending. Then as I went through my slides, I skipped a lot of them saying, “We don’t need to cover these because I don’t want to bore you and finishing a little early is just fine.”
• I shared a live demo. A live demo that worked and didn’t crash!
• I took questions throughout the talk. This is probably the #1 thing that can be done to make a presentation interesting.
• I finished early. This is probably the #2 thing that makes for a great presentation!

I hate boring talks, which are especially rampant in our market.

I’m always grateful for the opportunity to present and really enjoyed the trip this week.

What things do you like to do to make your presentations great?