How to Create a Better Presentation?

Your presentation style portrays who you are:

"A successful person who can control the presentation, know what to do yet humble, display interest and knowledge..."or

"An unsuccessful person who seems does not know what to do and still seeking direction..."

So, here are some tips to help you create a better presentation:

Slide Design

1. Use calming background (e.g. white/light blue).
2. Use a clear and consistent design, do not clutter the screen.
3. Use color coding to: Emphasis or Highlight a certain keyword. This can capture user's attention. However, do not overuse this feature! If everything are highlighted, there is nothing else stands out.
4. Use bold slide title (short phrase on top of your slides... It gives a strong/aggressive feeling/a sense of confidence...
5. In the title slide, write your title in Bold. Put author names and affiliations clearly. Do not forget to write acknowledgement if any. You may want to put your university/company logo in this title slide (you may also want to put a smaller logo on the corner of each slide - by updating the master slide).
6. Improve your skill of choosing mixture of color: good color for presentation: dark blue, brown, deep red. For your information, there are several web sites about 'colors', which colors are good for presentations, for web pages, the color mixture issues, etc...
7. Give hyper-link to connect related slides together, e.g. you want to relate experimental results slide to a slide 10 pages further back that explains your experimental methodology.

KISS: Keep It Short and Simple

1. Make your slides short and sweet, cut it short. Do not put too many texts on the slide...

2. If there are materials that you know going to be hard to explain but not really significant to the main flow of your presentation, CUT IT OFF!You need to have a smooth flow!


3. If you really need to have complex wordy slides, try to go faster there or highlight key points only! Audience has tendency to get frustrated when they see a complex slide... Whenever possible, avoid designing a complex slide!

4. Reduce number of words in your slides, talk more! If you cannot remember everything, put the points in the slides in such a way that they represents keywords to help triggering your brain on what to say for that slide!



Source:

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey

Summary:

1. Be Proactive. You can either be proactive or reactive when it comes to how you respond to certain things. When you are reactive, you blame other people and circumstances for obstacles or problems. Being proactive means taking responsibility for every aspect of your life. Initiative and taking action will then follow. Covey also argues that man is different from other animals in that he has self-consciousness. He has the ability to detach himself and observe his own self; think about his thoughts. He goes on to say how this attribute enables him: It gives him the power not to be affected by his circumstances. Covey talks about stimulus and response. Between stimulus and response, we have the power of free will to choose our response.

2. Begin with the End In Mind. This chapter is about setting long-term goals based on "true north" principles. Covey recommends formulating a "personal vision statement" to document one's perception of one's own vision in life. He sees visualization as an important tool to develop this. He also deals with organizational vision statements, which he claims to be more effective if developed and supported by all members of an organization rather than prescribed.

3. Put First Things First. Here, Covey describes a framework for prioritizing work that is aimed at short-term goals, at the expense of tasks that appear not to be urgent, but are in fact very important. Delegation is presented as an important part of time management. Successful delegation, according to Covey, focuses on results and benchmarks that are to be agreed upon in advance, rather than prescribed as detailed work plans.

4. Think Win/Win describes an attitude whereby mutually beneficial solutions are sought that satisfy the needs of oneself, or, in the case of a conflict, both parties involved.

5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. Covey warns that giving out advice before having empathetically understood a person and their situation will likely result in rejection of that advice. Thoroughly reading out your own autobiography will decrease the chance of establishing a working communication.

6. Synergize describes a way of working in teams. Apply effective problem solving. Apply collaborative decision making. Value differences. Build on divergent strengths. Leverage creative collaboration. Embrace and leverage innovation. It is put forth that when synergy is pursued as a habit, the result of the teamwork will exceed the sum of what each of the members could have achieved on their own. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

7. Sharpen the saw focuses on balanced self-satisfaction: Regain what Covey calls "production capability" by engaging in carefully selected recreational activities

All Work and No Play...

Finding a balance between work, play, and other activities isn't easy. Different people will give you very different advice. Some people say you should be spending eighty or ninety percent of your waking hours working on your thesis. Others think that this is unrealistic and unhealthy, and that it's important for your mental and physical health to have other active interests.

If you have a family, you will have to balance your priorities even more carefully. Graduate school isn't worth risking your personal relationships over; be sure that you save time and energy to focus on the people who matter to you.

One of the keys to balancing your life is to develop a schedule that's more or less consistent. You may decide that you will only work during the days, and that evenings are for your hobbies. Or you might decide that afternoons are for socializing and exercising, and work late at night.

Many graduate students hit the doldrums around the end of the second or beginning of the third year, when they're finishing up their coursework and trying to focus in on a thesis topic. Sometimes this process can take quite a while.

Try to find useful, enjoyable activities that can take your mind off of the thesis. If you schedule regular activities (rehearsals, tennis lessons), you will probably find it easier to avoid drifting aimlessly from day to day.

In the final push to finish your thesis, though, you will almost certainly have less time for social activities than you used to. Your friends may start to make you feel guilty, whether they intend to or not. Warn them in advance that you expect to turn down lots of invitations, and it's nothing personal -- but you need to focus on your thesis for a while. Then you'll be all done and free as a bird! (Until the next phase of your life starts...)

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