How many times have you attended or given a presentation only to have something go wrong with the projector either when setting up or in the middle of a presentation?

What affect did it have on your audience? Did you apologize and wait and call IT and… what happened to your message? Did your story stop?

The take away? Know your story so you don’t skip a beat if something happens mid-presentation. If you have the chance to setup early, take it and make sure everything works prior to beginning your presentation. This way, you increase the chances of your story being uninterrupted and your message getting to your audience.

Photo from pedrosimoes7

In a workshop last week, I was discussing use of the notes section in PowerPoint. Once you have your outline of your talk, type in what you’d want to say in the notes section. We were doing an exercise with sticky notes and walking through the steps to move from sticky notes to create slides. Rather than type on the slide, start in the notes. This way, all those bullet points you would have put on the slide go in the notes and your slide is saved from the bullet points. So is your audience.

One participant of the workshop commented that by forcing oneself to START in the notes section, it left the opportunity to think about how to visualize the point up on the slide.

Try it! Did it work for you?