Preparing For Your Session

Preparing

Before you begin, ask yourself the following questions:

Who will be attending? How many?
What is their educational background and level of knowledge? Cultural characteristics?
Why are they attending?
What are their values?
What are their needs and interests?
What does the audience expect from me?
What is my purpose and role?
What is my format (poster, panel presentation, case study, technical paper?)
How long is my presentation?
Does my presentation help attendees meet their own goals and objectives for attending Convention?

Select your visuals carefully and keep in mind that visuals enhance your message, but they are not your message. Visuals should:

Consider the following when creating and presenting visuals:

Keep it simple. One point or concept per visual.
Give visuals a headline that helps increase comprehension (think newspaper headline).
Visuals should illustrate your verbal points clearly.
Interpret visuals—do not just report them.
Visuals should be large and easy to read.
Viewers should get the point of your visual/s within five seconds.
Be consistent with font, colors, and format.
Take care when using laser pointers - do not point at the audience. Flash the pointer off and on to briefly illuminate indicated area.
Do not swirl the pointer across the screen.
Use slides to build your series of points.
For each visual ask yourself:

Is it relevant, or merely "cute" or "faddish"?
Does it add information or duplicate verbal material? If it duplicates material, is the redundancy desirable or necessary to reinforce an important idea?
Is it clear and easy to understand?

Each slide should have no more than six lines of text per slide, no more than seven words per line.
Avoid using numerous text slides in a row.
Limit the amount of data on graphs and tables.
Practice. Become familiar your slides.
Face the audience when you talk (not your slides).