Presentation - Definition and Overview

For other meaning of Presentation, please refer to the Presentation_(disambiguation) page.

Presentation is the process for one to present the content of a topic to audience. Presentation software like PowerPoint, Harvard Graphics or Lotus Freelance are often used to illustrate the presentation content. But when a more professional layout is required, one may deploy Adobe Illustrator to develop those complex chartings and illustrations like market segmentation graphs.

Skeleton of a Presentation

To deliver a good presentation, you shall move on with the four steps below:

• Planning: Understand your audiences -- about their need, their background, and the place to deliver your presentation as well. The way to present a topic to a group of elementary students is different than to present to undergraduates. To present in a meeting room, you can speak faster; but presenting in a hall, you need to be slower. Plan your coverage, so you can present within the time frame.
• Preparing: Thesis statement -> objectives -> Outline -> coverage depth. Encourage responses, and stimulate reactions and their learning desire.
• Delivering: Deliver your presentation, with visual aids like presentation slides. Use animation smartly, that they will not distract the audiences. Think of putting summaries of each slide in the "note" portion of your presentation, and have them printed out as hand out to audiences.
• Reviewing: It is common for you to deliver the presentation again. Review your performance and correct them in the next time.

Useful illustrations

• Waterfall diagram: This diagram breaks down the 100% of market share into their each holder, sorting from largest to smallest.
• BCG diagram: This diagram is extremely useful in marketing, although most people learnt only the basic of the diagram in undergraduate.
• SWOT Analysis: Clear and precise, and state the problem effectively.

Caution on Presentation Slides

• Keep characters big enough
• Avoid table with too many rows and columns (like balance sheets, people simply cannot read the characters, and thus useless)
• Avoid jamming too much content in a page. Break them into two or three pages. Keep only several points on each page.

See also

• PowerPoint
• Harvard Graphics
• Lotus Freelance
• Adobe Illustrator
• Knowledge visualization

External Advice on Presentations

• The Aziz Corporation (http://www.azizcorp.com/downloads/)
• Attention Spam (http://www.attentionspam.com)