NC STATE UNIVERSITY College of Engineering The 7 Deadly Sins of Bad Presenters Dr. Med Byrd Paper Science & Engineering Program NC State University

NC STATE UNIVERSITY College of Engineering #1: Body Movement Bad presenters can’t seem to control their hands, fingers, legs, or bodies Constantly moving, twitching, etc. Distracts audience from your presentation Ask yourself: Where are my hands? Where are my feet?

NC STATE UNIVERSITY College of Engineering #2: No Outline or Summary Slides The audience needs to know, up front, what you plan to do – use an outline slide They need to know, at the end, what you thought was important – use a summary or conclusion slide

NC STATE UNIVERSITY College of Engineering #3: Too Much on a Slide Don’t put more than 3 (maybe 4) bulleted items on a single slide Don’t put up graphs or tables that cannot be read or understood easily (use handouts if necessary) Don’t be afraid to use more slides with less info on each Keep it simple!

NC STATE UNIVERSITY College of Engineering #4: Reading the Presentation From the Screen The most awful sin of all! Why does the audience need to listen to you read the presentation? Why is a presentation needed at all? Use the slides as general guidelines and to show data – but YOU tell the story! If you don’t know it…don’t present it!

NC STATE UNIVERSITY College of Engineering #5: Too Much Time on a Slide Rule of thumb: Don’t spend more than seconds on a given slide Puts the audience to sleep Keep it moving Use multiple slides with moving highlights

NC STATE UNIVERSITY College of Engineering #6: Not Rehearsing A cardinal sin “Winging it” will get you in trouble Rehearse ANY presentation at least 3 times…with a stopwatch! When you KNOW it….then you can relax and put real emotion and life into the presentation

NC STATE UNIVERSITY College of Engineering #7: Not Preparing This is different than rehearsing Have you -actually projected the slides on a screen, to see if they are readable? -is the presentation readable from the back of the room? -does the video clip actually boot up? -is there a computer in the room? Does it work? Does it have USB? -Don’t go in not knowing what’s going on!

NC STATE UNIVERSITY College of Engineering Being able to make an effective presentation is an important part of an engineering career!