Presentations - Do's and Dont's

A must read for all of you who will be giving presentations often - as grad students or as company executives.

http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/labrats/

I learnt a lot. I wished this guy had posted a couple of weeks ago! I did face many of these problems he has mentioned. Especially the background color scheme. It is in fact very deceiving. It looks different at home and very very different in the seminar hall. The lesson I learnt - never trust your background colors unless you are going to be presenting in a dark seminar hall.

Some funny picks-
- Don't get too depressed if people are asleep. It happens to all of us!
- Remember you're trying to impress us (The audience), not the screen!
- Imagine that Professor Sleepy has dozed off during your talk, and wakes suddenly during a crucial data slide!
- Recall that 10% of your audience might be colour-blind!

Apart from what he had to say, out of experience in my own talks and as an audience, I had a couple of things to add in -

- If you are copying images from a text or a journal, take care not to distort them out of proportion.
- Never put stuff in there just to add/fill slides. I have seen a lot of people, especially students, do that.