Creation of presentations

When you’re asked to give a presentation, consider using the four P’s of presentation steps to help you with your creation. The four Ps are: plan, prepare, practice and perform. This article will cover steps one and two, which are about planning and preparing for your presentation.

1.During Plan, you’ll consider your audience and why you’re giving the presentation along with what generally appeals to them and why they might want to know about your topic. You will determine with the person requesting the presentation how much time you will have and what kind of visual aids may be relevant and usable at the final presentation location. You can find some tips in the Summary section of the book “RA!RA! A Meeting Wizards’ Approach” that help in developing planning questions to ask during this step, such as:

• When do I have to be there? Presentation date with start/end time and place.

• Who will be there? Description of the main audience and names of the decision makers.

• What will appeal to this audience and why do they want to know about this topic? The reason(s) why the presentation is necessary or relevant to this hearing.

• What types of supporting and audiovisual documents are preferred by the audience? Items like projection or brochures that are preferred or available to this audience.

• How much presentation time should be allowed for questions and answers at the end? Most presentations are followed by questions and answers from the audience to the speaker and knowing the desired time frame allows for better time allocation of prepared speaking points.

two. Prepared your presentation by thinking about both the beginning and the end, and then add the detail in the middle that supports your good start and finish. Now that you know what to say and are aware of your visual aid limitation, think about how you can make the presentation memorable by developing any visuals that might accompany the presentation and making sure your flow matches the presentation. When developing images, remember that you don’t want people fumbling for brochures or noticing spelling errors when they might be listening. When preparing, consider what the “RA!RA! A Meeting Wizards’ Approach” Book Presentation Plan form suggests as possible general questions for an informative presentation:

• Why are we here? The presentation of the reasons is necessary or desirable at this time.

• What have we done? History, work or statistics related to the purpose or presentation.

• What do we plan to do? Possible future outcomes or actions as a result of the presentation or decision to be made based on the presentation.

• What have we learned? Summary of the presentation or recommendations.

• What do we have to share? Stories, stats, graphs, or other data to prove points.

• What do we need? Resources to facilitate presentation and discussion or to take action.

With the Plan and Prepare steps, you’ve learned how to ask questions to help you develop talking points and visual aids. To understand the Practice and Execute steps, see the article on “Giving Presentations.”