Suggestions for developing a memorable presentation

1. Work with your group to determine what you want to say, but not how you want to say it.

2. Fancy words don’t matter when presenting, people tend to hear whatever you say in their own words anyway—fancy words are for writing, not speaking.

3. After you know what you want to say generally, write a script.

4. Memorize that script pretty well, but don’t worry about slipping up on one to words—you’re going to try and forget that script soon anyway. Consider different approaches to memorization: speaking out loud, typing, writing by hand, and mentally reviewing.

5. At least once, go through the script by memory and hand draw all the slides; make bullet points of what you are suppose to say on each slide—bullets should include hard facts that you have to say, but not full sentences.

6. Start practicing the script intentionally phrasing in different ways—or better stated, practice without trying to determine whether or not you are saying it exactly as the script was written.

7. Work with a person one-on-one who will give you critical advice about what isn’t working.

8. Practice for critical points (facts). Do not try and say the exact same thing every time—it is unnatural. We can almost never repeat back the exact same phrasing of anything we say—we know basically what we said, the main point and the general tone, but we rarely know the exact wording. Speeches become obviously memorized when you are mentally searching for a specific word rather than a concept.

9. Get to know the information thoroughly, then relax a little.

10. Don’t act, most of us are bad at acting and it shows. Don’t try to “present”, try to explain (e.g., one client at the GP defense remarked “I didn’t know I was going to a play”).

11. Practice a lot. Practice with different people—it’s hard to get excited or sound interesting when you are talking to people who know exactly what you are going to say.

12. Be yourself on stage, if you like hand movements, use them, if you like walking on stage do so, consider other people’s advice on the best style, but be confident that the audience actually wants to see you as a person—they aren’t as interested in seeing you try to be someone else.

13. If you know the information, if you have practiced, if you know the point of the story and what you want people to understand, then little slip-ups the day of or other life events that suddenly dominate your brain won’t throw you off as much.

14. Have confidence in yourself. You are smart, you know the information, and people are interested.

--Bridget Dobrowski