Every one of us has been there sitting at a conference panel listening to someone drone on as they speak for around 20-minute, in monotone. But when it comes to conferences: we need to write and present as we teach. We should try to achieve clarity, brevity, audience awareness and engagement. People should learn to hone their own presentation style, learn to engage with their audience, and cultivate this vital skill.

A flashy presentation is no substitute for solid ideas so, without further ado, here are some tips that we can follow to nail our next board presentations:

Don’t dive headfirst into your slides:

The first thing you need to know about creating an effective PowerPoint presentation is that you don’t touch that slide deck just yet. Beating the feeling of getting an email that lets you know that the proposal you worked tirelessly on has been accepted is really hard. It means a huge amount to find out that a committee has well-received your work, especially like most researchers out there, your passion for it drives you.

Don’t Ignore the time constraints:

When presenting at a conference, ensuring your timing is right is the most important thing. Prepare ten minutes of material if you have only ten minutes to present. Not more than this. You may not get a chance to highlight your findings and recommendations if you don’t practice your timing which is the most important part.

The best presenters tailor their presentation to fit the time and always keep an eye on the time throughout. Jump past a couple of slides if you are running out of time and need to make one last point.

Don’t Use Flashy Visuals:

The key elements to any board presentations are the images. Visuals can be much more effective than words, whether it’s a pie chart to show percentages or a strong image to convey a point. Visuals help in reinforcing the ideas you were trying to get across. The audience understands the message better when it’s presented with visuals that they can relate to.

But don’t forget to keep your visuals clean and simple. Some of the worst conference presentations are the ones with complex imagery.

Be simple and consistent:

If you need to make a point that isn’t easy to communicate visually, don’t be afraid of using some text and bullet points or even in the case you want to discuss steps or sequences.

Use them to communicate your point to the audience. Less is more in terms of the text on the slides as you want your audience to listen to you instead of reading from the slides.

Even though inconsistency in slides is a subtle thing, it can take away from a presentation very easily. At the same time, slides with different colours may distract your audience. A consistent template with the same fonts is considered the best option to make it easy to follow along for your audience. Use large clear fonts and as few words as possible in your slides as your audience will view your conference presentation from a distance.

Know your audience:

One of the most common mistakes being made is presenting a roomful of people with the information they might already have.

People are there to learn about your new and exciting research, not to hear a summary of your old work. The worst presenters are the ones who assume that the audience doesn’t know anything and need education.

Find out what the audience already know and where they are up to with the topic before presenting to them.

Once you’ve mastered all the above-mentioned tips, you’ll be all set to give a great conference presentation. Don’t forget to share with us how you found these tips helpful in the comment section down below. All the best:)