Title: Presentation Skills for IT Specialists

Introduction

Most seminars on presentation skills have been developed by communication specialists for people who have to present publicly, such as salesmen, account managers, and marketing specialists. This one-day seminar is different. It is aimed at those for whom speaking in public is not their job. It has been developed specifically for IT specialists, and it presented by an IT specialist: Rick F. van der Lans

All aspects of a presentation are discussed, including developing the presentation material, arranging the order of the topics, setting up the room, handling the audiovisual equipment, the last preparations, body language, dealing with questions, and evaluating the lecture afterwards.

Subjects

1. Going for the Key Message

• Can you summarize the whole presentation in one sentence?
• Determine your goals and your audience's goal
• What is the background of the audience?
• How to convince your audience?

2. Developing an Attractive Story

• Summarize the highlights – brainstorming
• Distrbuting the highlights equally over the presentation
• A lineair story is a boring story, but what are the alternatives?
• Dare to simplify
• How should we start and end?
• Which technique will you use to help the attendees remember your message?
• The power of props and death by PowerPoint

3. Guidelines for Developing the Presentation Material

• General tips for the use of fonts
• How to work withcomplex diagrams
• Guidelines for making presentation material to be printed
• Who's in charge: the slides or the speaker?

4. The Preparations

• Practising in front of the mirror: useful?
• The final preparations - one hour before the presentation
• Studying the setup of the room and stage
• Can you present without the slides, or, what to do if there is no power
• techniques for remembering the order of the slides
• Repeating the key message 10 times before you go on stage

5. Being on Stage

• Four requirements: enthousiastic, reliable, professional, and credible
• How to be yourself on stage?
• becoming familiar with the stage and the machines
• Why do demo's go wrong so often?
• handling questions
• talking in black and white terms
• Jokes - does it fit your presentation style?
• "Reading" the audience
• Body language, or, the things we don't say with out mouth
• And then the projector broke
• Time management: guidelines on how to stay on time

6. Various Recommendations

• What can we learn from others?
• Tape yourself with a camera
• Evaluations

7. Concluding Remarks