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Visual Presentation

If you have the opportunity before your presentation, allow plenty of lead time to setup the room and your equipment and to test your presentation. Start promptly at the scheduled time. End promptly, leaving adequate time for audience questions. Be sure you have prioritized the key messages you want to get across to your audience. During your presentation, be ready to skip over less important visuals and content material as you notice time getting short

Test all of your equipment, software, network connections, and phone lines and make sure that they all work together. Make sure electrical, network, and phone cords are solidly connected to their outlets. Move cords out of your speaking traffic pattern and if possible, tape them down to avoid tripping and/or pulling them loose during your presentation. If using software, be sure to have critical files on floppy in case of damage or loss from the hard disk. Be prepared with alternative plans in case equipment, software, or connection lines fail. Handouts or overhead transparencies are good backup and “insurance”.

Find out where light switches are located. Display one of your visuals and walk around the periphery of the seating area to see the audience’s view under different lighting conditions. Identify the best combination of lighting for the audience when you use visuals. If light switches are remotely located from your presentation area, ask a session moderator or audience member to control the lights at your cue. Make sure they have an opportunity to identify switches for each lighting bank and test the switches. Check that you have enough light to read any notes or to use the computer keyboard.

Test your visuals for legibility. Adjust the screen/projector distance or zoom lens on projector to make sure your visuals are legible to your most distant viewer. Have alternative visuals such as audience handouts or overhead transparencies in case of equipment, software, connection malfunction.

If using a microphone, test it before the presentation. Generally, microphones work best when located several inches way from your mouth, just below your lower lip. When starting your presentation in large rooms, ask a person at the back corner of the room to wave if your speaking volume is adequate. Repeat any audience questions before answering.

Identify how to get help with room, sound, lighting or equipment problems

For any successful presentation, you must know your objectives. It is these objectives that drive your presentation and move the audience to your end goals. Your end goals may be that the attendees take a particular action, adopt a new perspective, or respond to facts and information. Establishing these goals requires careful planning. The key to designing your presentation is determining these objectives. After all, they become the foundation upon which your content, organization, and visual aids are built.

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Establishing the objectives for your presentation requires an analysis of your own goals, as well as your audience’s needs and expectations. By considering the nature of your audience, you can more easily determine what you will present and how you will present it. An audience analysis will enable you to:

• Select appropriate points of emphasis in your presentation
• Develop a useful level of detail
• Choose and prepare appropriate visual aids
• Create a tone that is sensitive to your audience's circumstance

Your presentation will ideally form a bridge between something you have and your audience wants. Let the audience analysis influence the form of information presented so you can create this bridge.