If you’ve been tasked with giving a presentation, you want to impact and impress your listeners. Experienced presenters know that careful preparation is essential. Take the time to consider your strategy in advance and start strong.  Your audience will sum up your style of presenting within the first few seconds, and if it is unexciting, you’ve lost their interest for the rest of your session.

You may even find that your presentation will be captured on video for future use in online events. That means that your lecture will be offered indefinitely, good or bad, so take these tips into consideration and make your presentation count for both your live and virtual audiences!

People Do Judge a Book by its Cover.  Before the audience has the chance to assess you on the quality of content you will be sharing with them, they gauge your professionalism and significance by the way you carry yourself. Wear a jacket, or better yet, a suit. Dark colors, such as black or blue appear most professional and look good on camera as well.  Consider a trim and neat haircut or hairstyle and limit amount of jewelry and accessories.

Learn the Subject, Not the Script. You need to know your subject matter inside and out. The audience is coming to learn from you, hear your ideas, and come away with a slice of your expertise on the topic. Anyone can simply do research on a subject matter, jot down a script and read from it. If your audience witnesses you taking this route, your credibility is weakened, and you’ve just joined the ranks of the “boring presenters”. If your presentation will be available online, you want to make sure your content and delivery is stimulating to avoid being “closed out” prematurely due to lack of interest. Thoroughly knowing the content will also ensure your ability to answer any range of questions asked if you incorporate a Q&A session at the end.

One Theme – Four Main Points. Your overall presentation should revolve around a main theme. And with that theme, try to bullet out up to four points during your speech. Though you have been called upon to provide a presentation and share your knowledge, that doesn’t mean you need to cram everything you know into your slotted delivery time.  Your audience should be able to walk away from your informational session having learned the topic and be able to recount at least two of the main points that were discussed.

Say It, Don’t Display It. Simple and visually stimulating slides are key to an effective PowerPoint presentation. Limit the amount of text on each slide. Narration should come from the presenter and need not be transcribed on the PowerPoint slides.  Slides are great for graphs, charts, statistics, and main bullet points – keep their use limited to that.   Stay away from “eye charts”-slides crammed with so much content that only those with 20-10 vision can read them. They are deadly with a live audience, and even worse online.

Arrive Early.  Nothing shakes nerves like running late to your presentation – trying to beat the clock and set up before your audience starts walking through the door. Allow ample time to arrive, ensure all equipment is working correctly, check the accuracy of your slides, and adjust lights and temperature in the room to comfortable settings. Particularly if your presentation will be video captured, you may face additional technical issues that will take time to resolve. It is also a great idea to find and meet the A/V or technical contact in case you have a glitch and need a quick equipment fix.

Deliver, Don’t Distract. Delivery is an art that is honed with experience and practice; however, even seasoned presenters can keep certain tips in mind during their delivery to ensure they make an impact – in a good way. Avoid distracting movements during your presentation such as touching your face, swaying back and forth, jerky hand motions, and fidgeting with clothes. Hesitations in voice, filler words such as “um” and “uh”, and awkward pauses as you try to find your place are all recipes for a distracted physical and virtual audience. Practice your speech repeatedly. The more comfortable you feel with the subject, your presentation, and its delivery – the more confident you will come across, reducing all the awkward aspects that come with unpreparedness.

Yes, Feedback is Necessary. Though it might be intimidating to open the door to critiques, it shows true professionalism when you ask your colleagues for feedback. It displays your desire to address any weaknesses and your will to work on improving them. Pass out brief questionnaires at the end of your presentation to get your audience’s fresh reaction to your presentation.  Provide the same opportunity for your virtual audience via online polls or surveys. Don’t take the negative comments to heart, incorporate them to make corrections in your next speech. Soak in the numerous positive remarks received and applaud yourself on a successful presentation.

Summary. Relax. You’ve been asked to give a presentation because you are viewed as a person who is knowledgeable, competent, and respected. Imagine yourself in the audience and base the structure of your presentation on what you would find interesting – as far as engaging material and stimulating delivery methods. Keep ideas concise, know your subject matter, and above all else, practice your speech to exhaustion. Your thorough preparation will benefit your physical audience as well as ensure a top-notch delivery each and every time your session is selected and downloaded by virtual viewers.

Turning 21 is a huge mile stone in life. Its something every young adult looks forward to. This is the time when they can hang out with their friends at the bar or clubs. Finding the perfect creative 21st birthday present can be crucial.

Birthday Flowers: Margarita Bouquet
This is the most creative 21st birthday present ever. Perfect for any girl who is turning 21 years old. The bouquet comes in a margarita shaped glass. It’s filled with yellow roses, white pom and has a fake lime margarita filling. Once the flowers have died, this can be used as an actual over sized glass. Making their birthday memory last forever.

Remote Controlled Beverage Buggy
This remote controlled car will be lots of interest and fun at the next get together. This little buggy holds two twelve ounce cans or bottles, and driving them to your guest. This little buggy can go right, left, forward and reverse. It works on batteries and will become the life of the party.

Duct Tape Flowers
Looking for the long lasting creative 21st birthday present? Then this is the one for you. You can get them duct tape roses. Colors come in silver, red, white, yellow, pink, black and blue. You can order them in 3, 6, 9 or 12 packs. They are packed in tissue, ribbon and are wrapped with cello just like real roses. Duct tape roses are perfect for male or female.

Hangover Recovery Kit
This present will be great after that long night of staying out and drinking. Everyone always has a blast on their 21st birthday. The day after is a whole different story. You can find many different kits available. Kit includes an ice pack, aspirin, flask filled with water, pillow and an eye mask with the words never again on it. This creative 21st birthday present will be cherished the next day and many times after that.

Giant Steel Man Flask
This flask will show everyone you can drink. Perfect for those who want everyone to know they are of drinking age. This flask is 12″ tall, and will hold 64 ounces of liquid. Made from stainless steel, it has a massive man look to it. The lid screws on and off. You can also get this flask engraved, to say whatever you would like. Will be a great gift and a constant reminder of their 21st birthday.

Pro Digital Breath Detector
A very unique birthday idea here. Help your young ones know, when they have had too much to drink. Instead of helping them party more this year, give them something, so they know when to stop partying, or when its time to call in a non drinking friend for a ride. This gives them an accurate measure in 3 seconds once they breathe in the small tube. Includes extra mouth pieces, carrying case and a car power adapter.

A good public speaker always knows his material while giving a speech. The speaker must always have a complete knowledge of the subject he is speaking on. After all, a mechanic cannot speak on the right way to cook a steak.

The speaker should be an expert in the subject he is going to deliver a speech on. This is really important as the audience must feel like that the speaker is well informed. If a speaker wants to be seen as a great public speaker, then he must know his craft well enough.

The following are three steps which will help you in learn your material to speak in an oral presentation or public address:

1. Make an outline.

Any oral presentation or public is like a battle for the speaker and it is foolish to fight a battle without any preparation. In order to make your presentation interesting and informative, you should arrange all the required equipments much before the day of the presentation. Research and accumulate all the material you want to study to make your presentation. Read all the material and take out important points which may be useful in your presentation.

Then you can read those points by don’t memorize them as if you forget something during the presentation, then your whole speech will get ruined. While preparing a speech being spontaneous is the best choice. But you must also sound knowledgeable while talking because you may have to answer few questions about your presentation and you should sound confident while answering them. You may look anxious, if you don’t know the topic well.

2. Review the outcome of the actual speech.

Once the speech is prepared, you must review your entire presentation once more. Make sure whether you have covered all the important points in your speech or not. For example, suppose you have to deliver a speech on the Hybrid Technology, now even though may have discussed all the technical terms and other aspects of the technology but have forgotten to give any examples of this technology. Such type of omissions should be rectified.

It is very important to pay due attention to every aspect of the subject you are going to speak on as you may be asked about some topic you forgot to mention from your audience.

3. Rehearse and master your final material.

While given the responsibility of any presentation, you will be told about how long the presentation will run. Hence you must rehearse the entire presentation beforehand to make sure that it runs for the required time only. If your presentation is long then you can shorten it or add some points if it is too short.

Rehearsing also helps us gain our confidence as by hearing ourselves giving the speech we get an idea about the actual presentation and we can also improve any glitches in our speech.