I was asked by a first-time EMS World Expo presenter for presentation tips.
At EMS World I invariably have found myself in a massive room with 400 seats which dwarfs the size of the audience for my niche topic presentations. Usually my room is bordered by Steve Berry and Ken Bouvier and their audience is lined up in the hall trying to find the seats. Instead of worrying about how many people are in my room I reassure myself with these thoughts: 1) EMS World wanted me to present because they believed my topics would be of interest to some attendees. 2) The people in the room are interested and I have a chance to give them ideas, resources, and inspiration to help them as an EMS professional.
Presentation Tips
1. Arrive early so you can set-up your computer, connect to the projector, and put on your lavalier microphone
2. Use the microphone. Even if the size of the audience is small the room is large.
3. Before you start work the room to find out why people chose the session, what they are hoping to learn, and what questions they hope to get answered. Ask their name and organization and if you can work that into the presentation.
4. Move around the room as you present. The podium is usually very far from the audience. Get closer to the audience by moving around the room as you present.
5. Ask “What questions do you have?” and count silently in your head as attendees compose the question they want to ask.
6. When someone leaves the room re-focus on delivering outstanding content to the people in the room. There are lots of reasons people leave a session. I would rather be focused on the people in the room instead of being distracted and worried about the people that leave.
7. Bring your own [amazon-product text=”Wireless Presentation Remote” type=”text”]B002NU5OAG[/amazon-product] (Amazon affiliate link) for advancing slides.
PowerPoint Slides
1. Use slides to support your presentation with keywords, images, or animations that help reinforce your important points.
2. The number of slides isn’t important. The quality of the information on the slides is important.
3. Increasingly attendees are photographing slides instead of asking for a copy of your slide deck. Use a large font, a text color that contrasts with the background, and move to the side to allow a decent photograph.
4. Invite attendees to connect with you after the session while still at the conference and after on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.
