by The Open University
Available in 42 free installments
Owner:
Keep it simple ? The audience can't do two completely unrelated things at once. They can't read your visual aid while you talk about something else; and they certainly can't look at your visual, listen to you and pass things round and look at them, all at the same time.
Decide exactly what aids and equipment you are going to use ? check that equipment (e.g. projectors and screens) is available before you start working on the visuals themselves. Don't assume anything ? there may not even be a board, let alone a projector of the type you want. If a piece of equipment you need is not normally in the room you will be speaking in, it is really safer to take care of the arrangements for booking it and actually collecting it yourself. There is nothing worse for your confidence (or your reputation), than to turn up having based the whole of your presentation on a video, only to discover that something has gone wrong with the arrangements and there is no available video recorder, or that your video-tape and their recorder are not compatible.
Organise the layout of your ?stage? yourself ? first, find the time to get into the room and familiarise yourself with the position of everything you are likely to need. Is that table going to be big enough to get all your material on, without your having to stack things in piles? Is the screen placed so that you won't obscure it when you're talking? If not, can it be moved? If not, plan your presentation accordingly ? perhaps it would be better not to use the overhead projector at all, for example.
Get into the room at least a quarter of an hour before you are due to speak. Work out how you want the area you will be working in arranged so that you will be able to move easily and naturally in the space provided, and then move the furniture so that it feels right for you. Obviously, you should do this tactfully, but don't feel that you must use the room in the way it happens to be laid out. It may have been set that way for a previous speaker who had different needs; it may have been set out by the organiser working purely on intelligent guesswork ? it may even have ended up that way because that was the way the cleaner left it! So check that:
the television or slide projector is correctly positioned
the flip chart will be on your left when you face the audience if you are right-handed or on your right if you are left-handed
the table or lectern is near enough to the OHP so that you won't have to keep skipping about between them to look at your notes
an electric cable doesn't stretch across the area in which you will want to move
you know how to operate the blinds quickly and smoothly when you need to
you know how to operate a particular machine and that it works.
Visuals shouldn't be too detailed ? first, because your audience will probably not be able to assimilate the information quickly
