Does your presentation make clear the one big thing the audience should take away from your talk?
Are the slide designs clean and clear, and does each slide focus on only one point at a time?
Do the images used just look pretty or do they help to convey information, meaning, or emotional tone?
It’s easy to criticize someone else’s talk, but hard to see our own mistakes. But chances are your talk is too long, unclear at times, is not persuasive, and doesn’t resonate into one over-arching takeaway. Pretend it’s someone else’s talk, step back and look at it as a critical audience member. You’ll begin to see what’s wrong. If that doesn’t do it, have a friend present it to you.
A couple more hints: If you haven’t yet practiced the talk out loud, beginning to end, it needs work. If you haven’t spent 5x the talk time preparing it (at least 5 hours preparing a 1 hour talk), it needs work.
Photo credit: Peter Kaminski
