Blog Entry: Presentations

The presentations given last Friday were very informative and well delivered. I expected most people to do well, but everyone who presented so far did awesome. I was surprised by the amount of effort that was put forth in them and I learned a few lessons about giving a better presentation in the future.

One of the key lessons I learned from the presentations given last Friday was that a presentation needs to be moderate, or in other words, done in balance.  Presentations that were informative yet entertaining informed the audience while keeping their heads off their desks.  This also involves a balance between reading prewritten slides or notecards and making an ad-lib (or improvised) explanation of what they just read so as to keep the presentation fluid, which I think a majority of the class accomplished.

Another lesson I learned from the presentations given that day was that presentations which were entertaining often involved the use of videos in them to echo the points the speaker made or just to stimulate the audience. For those who aren’t so eloquent as to have a majority of your audience give you they’re full attention just while you’re speaking, the use of videos can stimulate an audience who might be bogged down from you speaking too long.

And one of the most important things that I learned about a presentation was to keep your cool throughout the presentation and not get swayed by mistakes. I think Aiman’s presentation was a good example of this, in that she still did a good presentation despite there being technical difficulties.

The presentations I saw last Friday were great and taught me much about the person being presented and how I should better my own presentations. I look forward to next Friday and I hope that those who go next week will give great presentations as well.