how to make a presentation for a meeting

How to Give a Presentation During a Meeting (Without Screwing Up)

Tips and tricks for being persuasive and keeping your audience engaged.

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Giving a presentation during a meeting may seem easy on the surface, but many factors can get in the way of being effective.

You may be shy and stumble over your words. You may get nervous and rush through things too quickly in hopes of “getting it over with.”

You may even confuse your audience by sharing information in a scattered or illogical way.

It happens to the best of us.

The good news is, with thoughtful preparation, even the shiest among us can give killer presentations that captivate our coworkers.

Here’s how:

• How to start a presentation
• Effective presentation skills ‍
• When to use PowerPoint ‍
• Presentation tips and tricks

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<span class="h-circle">1</span> How to start a presentation

The best presenters capture audience attention from the beginning. They know that a lackluster start to anything will immediately sow seeds of disengagement.

Whether or not you believe human attention spans are like goldfish , the fact is, a strong start to your presentation will fill the room with energy that perks people up, while a weak start paves the way for staring off into space and discretely checking email.

Here are a few tips to start your next meeting presentation right:

Ask a question

Everyone likes feeling heard. One of the easiest ways to hook an audience from the start is by inviting them to respond to a relevant prompt. If a VP of marketing were giving a presentation about the company’s upcoming brand refresh, they might start by asking something like “How many people here feel like they have a good sense of how we’re perceived as a company?”

Share a story

As humans, we’re wired to pay attention to stories. They’re especially useful when the subject matter at hand isn’t particularly interesting on its own. If a CEO were giving a presentation aimed at motivating the entire company, they might share a story about how many people it once took to operate a battleship.

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<span class="h-circle">2</span> Effective presentation skills/techniques

Effective presentations are usually the result of careful preparation. Here are a few skills to refine during the preparation phase:

Knowing your audience

Giving an effective presentation means knowing your audience. To earn and sustain their attention, you need to assess what they already know about the subject and how much they care about it.

Use this information to calibrate your approach. You don’t want to assume they’re enthusiastic experts if they’re not, but you also want to respect their intelligence by meeting them where they are without lecturing them.

It’s a delicate balancing act, but when you get it right, you’ll leave them enough room to figure some things out on their own.

WHAT Ask questions that anyone in the audience could answer. ‍ WHY This allows you to engage the room and keep the audience energy level high.

Framing your story

If you’ve ever watched TEDTalks, you know firsthand that many of the best presentations unfold like a detective story. The speaker presents a problem, describes the quest for a solution, and leads the audience to a collective “aha” moment where their perspective shifts and they become even more engaged. 

Take the time to plot your points in a meaningful way so that your message is not only easy to follow, but also easy to remember. That means eliminating any diversions that don’t serve the story. 

When framed correctly, even the most serious and complex subjects can be riveting.

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<span class="h-circle">3</span> When to use a PowerPoint and when not to

PowerPoints have become the de facto tool of choice for meeting presentations. You can share visuals, advance slides with the click of a mouse, and they don’t take a ton of technical or design chops to look pretty.

The problem is, people tend to hide behind them. While it’s undeniably handy, PowerPoint isn’t the best vehicle for every presentation.

You should use a PowerPoint when:

• You want to review team progress against metrics
• You need to share a revenue report
• You have a lot of technical and/or data-rich information to convey

You shouldn’t use a PowerPoint when:  

• You need to create a strong connection with your audience
• You have an important story to tell (e.g. why the company is pivoting)
• You want to motivate and inspire people

If you’re still on the fence about whether you should use a PowerPoint for your next presentation, consider the goal of the meeting.

When your meeting goal is something straightforward, like assigning action items or reviewing team performance, go for the PowerPoint. 

If you’re aiming to convey something less cerebral—and potentially more emotional—don’t distance yourself from the message. Leave PowerPoint (and all technology) out of the equation.

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<span class="h-circle">4</span> Presentation tips and tricks

There are a few universal tips that will make your next presentation more effective no matter what it’s about:

Follow a logical structure ‍ Even if you can’t think of a relevant story, the information you present have a clear structure to keep people on track.

Slow down ‍ Speaking too fast breeds boredom and confusion. Even if you think you talk slow, talk slower.

Use questions as segues ‍ In addition to being great presentation starters, asking questions enables the presenter to shift from one topic to another without losing momentum.

Build your confidence ‍ Letting your personality shine through is a surefire way to convince people they should listen. Practice your presentation until it feels like you’re talking to a friend.

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How to Make Effective Impactful Presentations (Tips & Tools)

Learn how to make a good presentation great - step-by-step with examples. Learn the principles, guidelines & qualities needed to prepare captivating slides.

Dominika Krukowska

12 minute read

Short answer

Short answer: how to make a good presentation.

Start with a surprising statement, a bold promise, or a mystery

Provide context with a bit of background information

Structure your presentation within a story framework

Make every word count, and use as few as possible

Use visuals only to support your presentation text

Use interactive design to make your audience active participants

End by telling your audience what they can do with what they’ve learned

Boring presentations are instantly forgotten. How’s yours?

Lifeless presentations can spell doom for your message, leaving your audience disengaged and your goals unreached.

The price of a mediocre presentation is steep; missed opportunities, unimpressed prospects, and a bad rep.

In a world where everyone has grown to expect a good story, a boring presentation will be instantly forgotten. Like a drop in the ocean.

But not all is lost.

This post will teach you how presentation pros create compelling narratives and leverage the latest tech tools to command attention, drive a powerful message, and get shared like gossip.

Let’s get started!

How to prepare a presentation?

The successful presenter understands the value of small details and thorough preparation like the seasoned chef knows the importance of quality ingredients and careful technique for serving a 5 star dish

But where do you start?

Step-by-step guide for preparing a presentation:

1. Define your objective

Every presentation needs a clear goal. Are you looking to persuade, educate, or motivate? Perhaps you aim to showcase a product, or share insights about a recent project.

Defining your objective early on will guide your content creation process, helping you to focus your message and structure your presentation effectively. Think of your objective as the North Star guiding your presentation journey.

2. Analyze your audience

Next up, who are you talking to? Your audience should shape your presentation as much as your objective does. Understanding their needs, interests, and background will enable you to tailor your message to resonate with them.

Are they experts in your field, or are they novices looking for an introduction? What questions might they have? The more you know about your audience, the more compelling your presentation will be.

3. Research your topic

Once you've defined your objective and analyzed your audience, it's time to delve deep into your topic. Comprehensive research lays the groundwork for a robust, credible presentation.

Don't just scratch the surface – explore different perspectives, recent developments, and key statistics. This will not only enhance your understanding but also equip you with a wealth of information to answer any questions your audience might have.

4. Choose the right delivery format

Finally, consider the best format to deliver your message.

The right format can make all the difference in how your message is received, so choose wisely!

PowerPoint presentations are classic and easy to work with. But PowerPoint and Google slides are not so versatile in terms of their content experience. They're static, packed with information, and all look alike.

Our own presentation maker offers interactive, personalized, and multimedia content experience.

Data from our research of over 100K presentation sessions shows that audiences engage with Storydoc presentations 103% better than PowerPoint.

How to create an effective presentation?

There’s part art and part science in creating high-engagement high-impact presentations.

An effective presentation is the painstaking result of well-organized content, visuals that support and elevate your message, simplifying complex information, and personalizing wherever possible.

I wrote this post to teach you how to do all these, and a few things more.

Ready to learn? Let's dive in!

How to organize your presentation content?

Crafting a compelling presentation is like writing a page-turner.

You need to captivate your audience, maintain their interest, and guide them effortlessly through your narrative.

But how do you transform a heap of information into a well-structured presentation you can’t stop reading? There’s a structure you can follow.

3-step process for organizing a magnetic presentation:

1. Prioritize content

Your presentation should immediately capture interest and demonstrate relevance before moving on to establish understanding .

A) Build interest:

Begin with a strong hook that grabs your audience's attention. This could be an intriguing statistic, a powerful image , or an engaging question. It should stir curiosity and make your audience eager to hear more.

B) Establish relevance:

Once you have their attention it's time to establish why your presentation matters to your audience.

Address your audience's main concerns. Make sure your content directly speaks to these pain points, and address them in order of importance.

2. Build anticipation

A great presentation is like getting a new car – it builds anticipation, takes you on a thrilling ride, and ends with you wanting to share the experience with all your friends.

Start with a compelling problem your audience relates to and follow up with a promise of an amazing way they can solve it. This problem-solution dynamic creates a suspense that keeps your audience glued to your presentation.

3. Use a story framework

Finally, use a story framework to give your presentation structure and flow.

Begin with a big idea that underpins your presentation. Then delve into the problem, showcasing why it needs attention. Present your solution, painting a vision of a better future for your audience.

Weave in concrete examples of how your solution changes lives.

Tell the story of WHO you helped, WHAT the situation was before and after your solution, WHERE and WHEN it happened, WHY it worked and HOW it made them feel.

If you’re writing a business presentation you should follow this with an execution plan that outlines how the solution will be implemented.

Finally, close with clear next steps, guiding your audience on what they should do after the presentation to bring meaningful change into their lives.

Our recommended story framework:

How to design your presentation?

A good presentation is more than just making it look pretty ; it's about communicating your message effectively and creating a lasting impression.

Good presentation design grabs attention, and leads it to where it’s needed most. It takes your hand and leads you through the easiest and most pleasant path to understanding.

Good presentation design supports your message rather than steals the spotlight. Good design is narrated design.

What is narrated design (Scrollytelling)?

Scrollytelling, where "scroll" meets "storytelling", is an interactive content experience that guides readers through a narrative journey with a simple scroll. It connects text, images, videos, and animations into integrated “scenes” where content is both shown and narrated.

Scrollytelling breaks complex content into digestible chunks and gives the reader control over pace. It has been scientifically shown to enhance engagement, understandability and memorability.

Scrollytelling came up as a central thing when Itai Amoza, our Founder and CEO was building the foundations for Storydoc.

He partnered with one of the world’s leading visualization scientists , prof. Steven Franconeri , to help him bring to Storydoc the means to reduce the complexity, friction, and information overload so characteristic of business presentations.

Scrollytelling is part of the solutions that came up, which led to specialized storytelling slides like our narrator slide (in the example below).

An example of Storydoc scrollytelling:

How to design presentation visuals to support your story

Presentation visuals can be unsung heroes or sloppy distractions.

Visuals can bring your message to life, make complex concepts easy to understand, and engage your audience in ways that words alone cannot. Or… they can sit there looking all pretty and distract you from what’s really going on.

4 elements of great presentation visuals:

Support your message: Your visuals should support your text, highlight your main message, and align with your objective. They should reinforce your points and help your audience understand your message.

Represent your audience: The best visuals are relatable. They should resonate with your target audience and reflect their world of associations. Use images and graphics that your audience can identify with – this can enhance their engagement and make your presentation more memorable. Equally important is using clean images - an effective way to do this is by using tools that allow you to remove your image backgrounds . By eliminating distractions and focusing on your subject, you create images that are more impactful and, therefore, can potentially increase audience engagement.

Introduce your product, outcomes, and clients: Wherever possible, use visuals to demonstrate your product, illustrate outcomes, and represent your clients. This can remove doubt and misunderstanding by letting your audience see (and make obvious) what words sometimes struggle to describe.

Follow your branding guidelines: Your presentation is an extension of your brand, so your visuals should conform to your branding guidelines. Consistent use of colors, fonts, and styles not only enhances brand recognition but also creates a cohesive, professional look.

Here’s an example of a well-designed presentation:

How to communicate complex information?

Did you ever have to read a presentation where you felt like you're lost in a maze of jargon, data, and complex concepts?

Are you giving others this same experience?

Communicating complex information is a common challenge in presentations. But there are ways you can simplify your presentation and reengage your audience.

Here’s how you can get complex information across:

1. Use interactive content

Interactive content is your best friend when it comes to simplifying complex information and getting deeply engaged with your content.

It gets the readers more involved in your presentation by letting them play an active part; like choosing the content route they wish to take and controlling the pace.

It keeps your presentation textually lean - giving readers the choice to expand more details on demand (in tabs, live graphs, sliders, accordions, and calculators).

Beyond that, live graphs can illustrate trends, animations can demonstrate processes, and videos can bring concepts to life.

Calculators, questionnaires, and chatbots provide personalized and specific answers to readers as part of your presentation, without them having to get in touch with you or your team.

Elavating your presentations from static to interactive has been tied to increasing the number of people who read your presentation in full by 41% !

Making interactive used to be hard, but now you can just use Storydoc. Go make your first interactive presentation. It’s easy as pie.

2. Show don’t tell

A picture is worth a thousand words. Because no one will read a presentation with a thousand words, do everyone a favor and use images.

Images can be super effective at communicating complex information and save you a lot of needless text.

In fact, visual representation of data and concepts can often convey what words cannot. Use diagrams, infographics, and images to illustrate your points and simplify the complex.

The goal is to create a visual narrative that complements your verbal one.

3. Narrate your content

Storytelling is another powerful tool for communicating complex concepts.

Whether it's through text to speech AI, video bubbles, or a scrollytelling narrator slide, narrating your content can help guide your audience through the complexity.

By giving your information a narrative structure, you can make it more digestible, engaging, and memorable.

According to Sales Hacker’s data, people remember up to 10% of numbers and 25% of images they see. When you center your presentation around a story, this rises to 60-70% .

4. Use examples and allegories

Examples and allegories help unravel the complexity of ideas.

They scaffold your message with concepts we already know and understand, and can easily imagine in our mind. This makes them less new and intimidating and more familiar.

Critically, the real secret lies in selecting examples that are not just familiar but also deeply relevant—those are the ones that will truly ring with your listeners.

If you tailor the allegory to your audience's world, it is guaranteed to lead to an “aha” moment.

5. Open a line of communication

Finally, invite dialogue. This could be through a chatbot or an option to book a meeting for further discussion. This not only helps clarify any confusion but also encourages engagement and deepens understanding.

For example, finishing your presentation with an interactive calendar to book a meeting instead of a generic “Thank you” slide has proven to boost conversion rate by 27% !

How to personalize your presentation?

Imagine attending a party where the host doesn't remember your name or anything about you. Not a great experience, right? The same holds true for presentations.

In a sea of generic content, personalization can be a lifeline that connects you to your audience on a deeper level. It’s also the single most important predictor of success, getting 68% more people to read your presentation in full .

But how do you add that personal touch?

1. Address reader by name

Just as you wouldn't start a conversation without a greeting, don't start your presentation without acknowledging your audience.

Using your audience's name can make your presentation feel like a personal conversation rather than a generic monologue. It's a simple yet powerful way to engage your audience from the get-go.

2. Use their company logo

Including your audience's company logo in your presentation can make them feel seen and valued. It shows that you've taken the time to tailor your presentation to them, enhancing its relevance and appeal.

Plus, it's a subtle way to reinforce that your message is specifically designed to address their needs and challenges.

3. Add a personal message (video or text)

A personal message can go a long way in building a connection with your audience.

It could be a video message from you, expressing your enthusiasm for the opportunity to present to them, or a text message highlighting why the presentation matters to them.

This personal touch can make your audience feel special and more invested in your presentation.

4. Personalize your Call-to-Action

Finally, cap off your presentation with a call to action that speaks directly to your audience.

Swap out the generic 'Contact us' with something that gets to the heart of their needs, something like, 'Let's roll up our sleeves and tackle your [specific issue] at [their company].'

By tailoring your call to action, you show your audience you've truly got their back, that you're not just here to talk, but to make a real, positive impact on their world.

Here’s an example of a personalized slide:

How to measure the effectiveness of your presentation

Imagine if you could peek into your audience's mind, understand what resonated, what fell flat, and what drove them to action?

Presentation analytics is essential in order to guide you on how to fine-tune it for maximum impact.

But how do you get your hands on presentation analytics?

Any presentation you create with Storydoc comes with an out-of-the-box analytics suite , ready to track and provide insights.

We give you 100% visibility into how people engage with your presentations and send you real-time engagement alerts.

Here’s a video explaining how you can track performance with our analytics panel:

4 critical presentation engagement metrics to keep track of

1. Reading time

Storydoc gives you the precise time prospects spend reading your presentation so you can quickly figure out what's hitting the target and what's not.

Are they soaking up every word or just quickly skimming through? This can help you shape your content to hit the bullseye.

NOTE: Keep in mind that reading time alone might not show you a full picture. A better way is to use a smart engagement score that brings together different metrics like time spent and depth of reading. You can get this kind of total score in Storydoc.

2. Reading completion

Another basic metric we track is how many people read your content from start to finish.

This metric is a strong sign of the prospect’s interest and your content quality. It shows you if they're finding the information relevant, but also worth sticking with till the end.

3. Next step conversion rate

This one tracks how many people take the next step after they check out your presentation. This could be filling out a form, setting up a meeting, or downloading more files.

For business presentations, measuring this can show how well your presentation is pushing people further down the sales funnel.

At the top of your analytics dashboard, you can find a tab that shows you how many people clicked on your CTA divided by presentation, date, and location. If you scroll down to the list of readers, next to each person you can also see whether they clicked on the CTA or not.

Here's what it looks like:

4. Number of shares

This metric is particularly important for B2B sales teams . As more people are getting involved in buying decisions, this measure helps you see if and when your content is being passed around inside your prospect’s company.

On the analytics dashboard, under each presentation version, you can find detailed information on how many people read it. So, the higher the number, the more your presentation has been shared internally.

We'll notify you when your presentation has been shared, and who opened it, so you can time your follow-up perfectly to your buyer’s readiness to advance further.

Here's where you can find this information:

Best tool for making an effective presentation

In the realm of presentation tools, classics like Google Slides and PowerPoint offer simplicity and ease, while Canva and Pitch add a dash of design flair and collaboration.

If you're seeking to elevate your presentations to new heights you’ll need to do better than simple PowerPoints or flashy Canvas. Next-gen AI presentation tools like Storydoc are your game-changer.

They break free from the static concept of slides and offer the creation of interactive, immersive content experiences that sweep us along like a good story.

Grab a template - create your best presentation to date

Ever wished for a secret recipe to whip up a killer presentation? We've got something even better! Our interactive presentation templates are your shortcut to success.

Say goodbye to hours of formatting and hello to captivating, interactive presentations, all with a few clicks.

Grab a template and turn presentation woes into wows!

Hi, I'm Dominika, Content Specialist at Storydoc. As a creative professional with experience in fashion, I'm here to show you how to amplify your brand message through the power of storytelling and eye-catching visuals.

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How to give a good presentation that captivates any audience

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What are the main difficulties when giving presentations?

How to create an effective presentation, after that, how do i give a memorable presentation, how to connect with the audience when presenting.

If you’ve ever heard someone give a powerful presentation, you probably remember how it made you feel. Much like a composer, a good speaker knows precisely when each note should strike to captivate their audience’s attention and leave them with a lasting impression.

No one becomes a great public speaker or presenter without practice. And almost everyone can recall a time one of their presentations went badly — that’s a painful part of the learning process.

Whether you’re working within a small creative team or a large organization, public speaking and presentation skills are vital to communicating your ideas. Knowing how to present your vision can help you pitch concepts to clients, present ideas to your team, and develop the confidence to participate in team meetings.

If you have an upcoming presentation on the horizon and feel nervous, that’s normal. Around 15-30% of the general population experience a fear of public speaking . And, unfortunately, social anxiety is on the rise, with a 12% increase in adults over the last 20 years . 

Learning how to give a good presentation can dismantle your fears and break down these barriers, ensuring you’re ready to confidently share your point of view. 

It’s the week before your presentation, and you’re already feeling nervous . Maybe there’ll be an important mentor in the room you need to impress, or you’re looking for an opportunity to show your boss your value. Regardless of your countless past presentations, you still feel nervous. 

Sharing your vision and ideas with any sized group is intimidating. You’re likely worrying about how you’ll perform as a presenter and whether the audience will be interested in what you offer. But nerves aren’t inherently negative — you can actually use this feeling to fuel your preparation.

It’s helpful to identify where your worries are coming from and address your fears. Here are some common concerns when preparing for an upcoming presentation:

Fear of public speaking: When you share your ideas in front of a group, you’re placing yourself in a vulnerable position to be critiqued on your knowledge and communication skills . Maybe you feel confident in your content, but when you think about standing in front of an audience, you feel anxious and your mind goes blank.

It’s also not uncommon to have physical symptoms when presenting . Some people experience nausea and dizziness as the brain releases adrenaline to cope with the potentially stressful situation . Remember to take deep breaths to recenter yourself and be patient, even if you make a mistake.

Losing the audience’s attention: As a presenter, your main focus is to keep your audience engaged. They should feel like they’re learning valuable information or following a story that will improve them in life or business.

Highlight the most exciting pieces of knowledge and ensure you emphasize those points in your presentation. If you feel passionate about your content, it’s more likely that your audience will experience this excitement for themselves and become invested in what you have to say.

Not knowing what content to place on presentation slides: Overloading presentation slides is a fast way to lose your audience’s attention. Your slides should contain only the main talking points and limited text to ensure your audience focuses on what you have to say rather than becoming distracted by the content on your slides.

Discomfort incorporating nonverbal communication: It’s natural to feel stiff and frozen when you’re nervous. But maintaining effective body language helps your audience stay focused on you as you speak and encourages you to relax.

If you struggle to incorporate body language into your presentations, try starting small by making hand gestures toward your slides. If you’re working with a large audience, use different parts of the stage to ensure everyone feels included. 

Each presenter has their own personal brand and style. Some may use humor to break the ice, while others might appeal to the audience’s emotional side through inspiring storytelling. 

Watching online presentations, such as TED talks, is an excellent way to expose yourself to various presentation styles and develop your own. While observing others, you can note how they carry themselves on stage and learn new ways to keep your audience engaged.

Once you’ve addressed what’s causing your fears, it’s time to prepare for a great presentation. Use your past experience as inspiration and aim to outshine your former self by learning from your mistakes and employing new techniques. Here are five presentation tips to help you create a strong presentation and wow your audience:

1. Keep it simple

Simple means something different to everyone.

Before creating your presentation, take note of your intended audience and their knowledge level of your subject. You’ll want your content to be easy for your intended audience to follow.

Say you’re giving a presentation on improving your company’s operational structure. Entry-level workers will likely need a more straightforward overview of the content than C-suite leaders, who have significantly more experience. 

Ask yourself what you want your audience to take away from your presentation and emphasize those important points. Doing this ensures they remember the most vital information rather than less important supporting ideas. Try organizing these concepts into bullet points so viewers can quickly identify critical takeaways.

2. Create a compelling structure

Put yourself in your audience member’s shoes and determine the most compelling way to organize your information. Your presentation should be articulate , cohesive, and logical, and you must be sure to include all necessary supporting evidence to strengthen your main points.

If you give away all of your answers too quickly, your audience could lose interest. And if there isn’t enough supporting information, they could hit a roadblock of confusion. Try developing a compelling story that leads your audience through your thought processes so they can experience the ups and downs alongside you. 

By structuring your presentation to lead up to a final conclusion, you’re more likely to keep listeners’ attention. Once you’ve reached that conclusion, you can offer a Q&A period to put any of their questions or concerns to rest. 

3. Use visual aids

Appealing to various learning styles is a great way to keep everyone on the same page and ensure they absorb your content. Visual aids are necessary for visual learners and make it easier for people to picture your ideas.

Aim to incorporate a mixture of photos, videos, and props to engage your audience and convey your key points. For instance, if you’re giving a presentation on anthropology subject matter, you could show your audience an artifact to help them understand how exciting a discovery must have been. 

If your presentation is long, including a video for your audience to watch is an excellent way to give yourself a break and create new jumping-off points for your speech.

4. Be aware of design techniques and trends

Thanks to cutting-edge technology and tools, you have numerous platforms at your disposal to create a good presentation. But keep in mind that although color, images, and graphics liven things up, they can cause distraction when misused.

  Here are a few standard pointers for incorporating visuals on your slides: 

• Don’t place blocks of small text on a single slide
• Use a minimalistic background instead of a busy one
• Ensure text stands out against the background color
• Only use high-resolution photos
• Maintain a consistent font style and size throughout the presentation
• Don’t overuse transitions and effects

5. Try the 10-20-30 rule

Guy Kawasaki, a prominent venture capitalist and one of the original marketing specialists for Apple, said that the best slideshow presentations are less than 10 slides , last at most 20 minutes, and use a font size of 30. Following this strategy can help you condense your information, eliminate unnecessary ideas, and maintain your audience’s focus more efficiently.

Once you’re confident in creating a memorable presentation, it’s time to learn how to give one. Here are some valuable tips for keeping your audience invested during your talk: 

Tip #1: Tell stories

Sharing an anecdote from your life can improve your credibility and increase your relatability. And when an audience relates to you, they’re more likely to feel connected to who you are as a person and encouraged to give you their full attention, as they would want others to do the same.

Gill Hicks utilized this strategy well when she shared her powerful story, “ I survived a terrorist attack. Here’s what I learned .” In her harrowing tale, Hicks highlights the importance of compassion, unconditional love, and helping those in need.

If you feel uncomfortable sharing personal stories, that’s okay. You can use examples from famous individuals or create a fictional account to demonstrate your ideas.

Tip #2: Make eye contact with the audience

Maintaining eye contact is less intimidating than it sounds. In fact, you don’t have to look your audience members directly in their eyes — you can focus on their foreheads or noses if that’s easier.

Try making eye contact with as many people as possible for 3–5 seconds each. This timing ensures you don’t look away too quickly, making the audience member feel unimportant, or linger too long, making them feel uncomfortable.

If you’re presenting to a large group, direct your focus to each part of the room to ensure no section of the audience feels ignored. 

Tip #3: Work on your stage presence

Although your tone and words are the most impactful part of your presentation, recall that body language keeps your audience engaged. Use these tips to master a professional stage presence:

• Speak with open arms and avoid crossing them
• Keep a reasonable pace and try not to stand still
• Use hand gestures to highlight important information

Tip #4: Start strong

Like watching a movie trailer, the first seconds of your talk are critical for capturing your audience’s attention. How you start your speech sets the tone for the rest of your presentation and tells your audience whether or not they should pay attention. Here are some ways to start your presentation to leave a lasting impression:

• Use a quote from a well-known and likable influential person 
• Ask a rhetorical question to create intrigue
• Start with an anecdote to add context to your talk 
• Spark your audience’s curiosity by involving them in an interactive problem-solving puzzle or riddle

Tip #5: Show your passion

Don’t be afraid of being too enthusiastic. Everyone appreciates a speaker who’s genuinely excited about their field of expertise. 

In “ Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance ,” Angela Lee Duckworth discusses the importance of passion in research and delivery. She delivers her presentation excitedly to show the audience how excitement piques interest. 

Tip #6: Plan your delivery

How you decide to deliver your speech will shape your presentation. Will you be preparing a PowerPoint presentation and using a teleprompter? Or are you working within the constraints of the digital world and presenting over Zoom?

The best presentations are conducted by speakers who know their stuff and memorize their content. However, if you find this challenging, try creating notes to use as a safety net in case you lose track.

If you’re presenting online, you can keep notes beside your computer for each slide, highlighting your key points. This ensures you include all the necessary information and follow a logical order.

Tip #7: Practice

Practice doesn’t make perfect — it makes progress. There’s no way of preparing for unforeseen circumstances, but thorough practice means you’ve done everything you can to succeed.

Rehearse your speech in front of a mirror or to a trusted friend or family member. Take any feedback and use it as an opportunity to fine-tune your speech. But remember: who you practice your presentation in front of may differ from your intended audience. Consider their opinions through the lens of them occupying this different position.

Tip #8: Read the room

Whether you’re a keynote speaker at an event or presenting to a small group of clients, knowing how to read the room is vital for keeping your audience happy. Stay flexible and be willing to move on from topics quickly if your listeners are uninterested or displeased with a particular part of your speech.

Tip #9: Breathe

Try taking deep breaths before your presentation to calm your nerves. If you feel rushed, you’re more likely to feel nervous and stumble on your words.

The most important thing to consider when presenting is your audience’s feelings. When you approach your next presentation calmly, you’ll put your audience at ease and encourage them to feel comfortable in your presence.

Tip #10: Provide a call-to-action

When you end your presentation, your audience should feel compelled to take a specific action, whether that’s changing their habits or contacting you for your services.

If you’re presenting to clients, create a handout with key points and contact information so they can get in touch. You should provide your LinkedIn information, email address, and phone number so they have a variety of ways to reach you. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all template for an effective presentation, as your unique audience and subject matter play a role in shaping your speech. As a general rule, though, you should aim to connect with your audience through passion and excitement. Use strong eye contact and body language. Capture their interest through storytelling and their trust through relatability.

Learning how to give a good presentation can feel overwhelming — but remember, practice makes progress. Rehearse your presentation for someone you trust, collect their feedback , and revise. Practicing your presentation skills is helpful for any job, and every challenge is a chance to grow.

Elizabeth Perry

Content Marketing Manager, ACC

6 presentation skills and how to improve them

Tell a story they can't ignore these 10 tips will teach you how, 3 stand-out professional bio examples to inspire your own, how to make a presentation interactive and exciting, how to write a speech that your audience remembers, reading the room gives you an edge — no matter who you're talking to, writing an elevator pitch about yourself: a how-to plus tips, your ultimate guide on how to be a good storyteller, 18 effective strategies to improve your communication skills, similar articles, the importance of good speech: 5 tips to be more articulate, the 11 tips that will improve your public speaking skills, 30 presentation feedback examples, how to not be nervous for a presentation — 13 tips that work (really), how the minto pyramid principle can enhance your communication skills, 8 clever hooks for presentations (with tips), stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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How to Give a Killer Presentation

• Chris Anderson

For more than 30 years, the TED conference series has presented enlightening talks that people enjoy watching. In this article, Anderson, TED’s curator, shares five keys to great presentations:

• Frame your story (figure out where to start and where to end).
• Plan your delivery (decide whether to memorize your speech word for word or develop bullet points and then rehearse it—over and over).
• Work on stage presence (but remember that your story matters more than how you stand or whether you’re visibly nervous).
• Plan the multimedia (whatever you do, don’t read from PowerPoint slides).
• Put it together (play to your strengths and be authentic).

According to Anderson, presentations rise or fall on the quality of the idea, the narrative, and the passion of the speaker. It’s about substance—not style. In fact, it’s fairly easy to “coach out” the problems in a talk, but there’s no way to “coach in” the basic story—the presenter has to have the raw material. So if your thinking is not there yet, he advises, decline that invitation to speak. Instead, keep working until you have an idea that’s worth sharing.

Lessons from TED

A little more than a year ago, on a trip to Nairobi, Kenya, some colleagues and I met a 12-year-old Masai boy named Richard Turere, who told us a fascinating story. His family raises livestock on the edge of a vast national park, and one of the biggest challenges is protecting the animals from lions—especially at night. Richard had noticed that placing lamps in a field didn’t deter lion attacks, but when he walked the field with a torch, the lions stayed away. From a young age, he’d been interested in electronics, teaching himself by, for example, taking apart his parents’ radio. He used that experience to devise a system of lights that would turn on and off in sequence—using solar panels, a car battery, and a motorcycle indicator box—and thereby create a sense of movement that he hoped would scare off the lions. He installed the lights, and the lions stopped attacking. Soon villages elsewhere in Kenya began installing Richard’s “lion lights.”

• CA Chris Anderson is the curator of TED.

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December 1, 2022

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How To Prepare a Meeting Presentation - 10 Practical Tips

Many of us will likely be required to give a presentation in a meeting at some point in our careers. And while it may be intimidating to stand in front of a group of people at 9 am and plainly state your thoughts, if done well, it can help skyrocket your confidence, credibility, and of course, career.

What's Inside?

But meeting presentations are just so easy to screw up. After all, compressing complicated business topics into a short series of slides is a challenge in itself. But then you also have to go and present those ideas to a group of people in such a way that they will understand and get on board with your ideas.

However, when delivered successfully, presentations may be a powerful tool for spreading your ideas. But not just that. A powerhouse presentation will also instill within the audience a fresh perspective on the presenter's authority and credibility.

And for that very purpose, here at Decktopus, we have put together a list of some of the most effective strategies you can use to plan, deliver, and follow up on your meeting presentation, so the next time you feel a bit overwhelmed, you can still get out there and captivate the audience!

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Know Your Audience

Before you put pen to paper, you first need to know to whom you will be presenting your ideas. And this means much more than knowing the names and credentials of each audience member.

A successful presenter must know her audience in excruciating detail. This includes their level of grasp on the subject, education, sense of humor, what they ate last night, and all other idiosyncrasies you can use to increase their immersion in the presentation.

Think of yourself as a second-hand car dealer. If a client came in wearing a Prada suit, you wouldn’t show them the Reliant Robin that’s been lying around for the last twenty years with rust patterns beginning to resemble famous prophets. No, you would direct them to the shiny new Mercedes that just came in yesterday.

This is because, even though you might want to sell a particular car, the client may not be interested in that specific design. And as a successful dealer, you must consider what your customer may be interested in beforehand and offer them the exact car or, in this case, presentation they want.

Use the information you have on your audience to structure your approach. For instance, you don’t want to use strings of big words if the audience isn’t as knowledgeable on the subject as you.

And similarly, decide on how much conversation grease you need to use depending on how much you think they will be invested in the presentation. For example, if you catch someone yawning, it might be just the opportunity to break the fourth wall and joke with them about the time they passed out on the copy machine.

It’s a complex recipe to make, but when you get it right, you’ll not only secure your audience’s attention but also make your message all the more memorable.

Do Your Research

A successful meeting begins before it even begins. The better your meeting preparation, the more effective your meeting will be.

When you arrive unprepared for a meeting, it shows that you aren't giving the meeting — or, more frustratingly, its audience — priority.

The good news is that everyone can deliver captivating presentations to their audience with careful research.

To be ready for queries, you must be knowledgeable in your subject. However, you also need to know how to mold it to convey the message you want the audience to take away.

Know the presentation's goals inside and out, and try to determine what the audience will find most interesting rather than what you are most eager to share with them.

Share the statistics that will have the biggest influence on your audience and that best support your arguments. To help make your point, use graphs, charts, or other visual materials.

Also, don’t forget to prepare a list of questions in advance. You'd be surprised at how impressed the audience would be to learn that you have done your research before the meeting.

Outline Your Presentation

As we mentioned in ‘Top Presentation Statistics for 2022’ most people consider ‘the story’ the most important and memorable part of a presentation. This means that your meeting presentation has to follow a well-structured narrative.

For most purposes, a modified version of the simple three-step presentation structure will be a suitable foundation to deliver a message successfully. Let’s go into more detail on how to make good use of each step.

Introduction

In any presentation, the primary objective of the introduction is to present the topic of discussion and the key message of the presentation itself. Some phrases you can use in this section are:

• 'Today I would like to talk about a very critical issue with our...'
• 'It is vital to understand that...'
• 'I believe this can be solved by...'

This section of your presentation supports your primary message. Each of your main points should be discussed in a clear and logical order. As you go, be sure to explain how these points relate to one another and to your main point. Phrases like the following may be beneficial:

• ‘Firstly, we must consider…’
• ‘As I mentioned before, this will enable us to…’
• ‘We must keep in mind the effects of…’

The ending of your presentation is an excellent chance to go over your key messages and their significance. In this section, you may benefit from a heavier use of literary techniques if the context is suitable to do so. Some typical phrases from the conclusion sections are:

• ‘Having seen the data, I am sure that you will agree with me when I say…’
• ‘And remember…’

This simple template should provide a suitable basis for you to expand according to the specificities of your presentation.

For example, it is common to see some meeting presentations require a much larger introduction section if the topics explained include many complex components. On the other hand, some may find it more beneficial to keep it short and punctual to evoke emotion in the audience.

Create a First Draft

“It doesn’t matter if it’s good right now, it just needs to exist.” — Austin Kleon

Most of us who are not in the antiques and collectibles industry can probably agree that the first version of something is usually not the best. The same principle goes for preparing meeting presentations as well.

The great thing about first drafts is that they give you the chance to visualize all the material you have developed thus far. Once you can see all your ideas in one place, you can start building off them, making additions where they may be helpful or omissions where necessary.

It will also serve as a creative playground. A solid practice among writers is to write down everything that comes to your mind and then pick and choose the sections that you think will be the best for the slide.

Design Your Presentation Slides

To most of us, a presentation’s graphic design side may seem a bit of a hassle. And according to Northern Illinois University , ‘Poorly designed presentation materials’ is one of the areas that students struggle with the most.

This is an important aspect of any successful presentation. Because, no matter how interesting your message is, if your audience is unable to keep up with the presentation, they are unlikely to be immersed in the content. The key to a successful presentation design is to structure it in such a way that it supports the message with eye-catching imagery while remaining simplistic.

There are several tried and tested tactics you can use to calibrate your visuals for this exact purpose:

• Avoid huge blocks of text
• Present one key point per slide
• Use quotes, images, and infographics
• Choose a font size that is visible when projected
• Keep the number of fonts to a minimum

Rehearse a Lot, Rehearse Aloud!

Rehearsal is critical for delivering an effective presentation. Rehearsing boosts your confidence, ensures you fully understand your material, and allows you to hone your presentation skills before the big meet.

It is critical to practice delivering your speech as well as using your visual aids, as many bits of hardware have a nasty tendency to malfunction right in the middle of a presentation.

This way, you will be better prepared for the actual presentation and get specific insights about its current state that you can use to tweak certain areas. For example, if the presentation takes a bit too long in your rehearsal, you will know, and be able to shorten it before actually getting in front of the audience.

Also, you might want to take this chance to choose and refine your mimics and gestures too, as these also play a prominent role in successfully conveying the desired message.

Prepare Written Notes

Generally, most people tend to believe that if they are delivering a presentation or a speech, they must be able to do so entirely from memory, without the use of notes. They seem to believe notes are cheating or make them appear unsure of their material. But it could not be further from the truth!

As a matter of fact, many public figures oftentimes make use of small notes in their speeches or presentations. This shows that they know the importance of sticking to your predetermined flow structure, and are aware that without a little reminder, it is entirely possible to lose track in the moment.

And what better way to remind yourself of your next topic of discussion than a small note?

Below we listed two of the most common types of notes used in speeches and presentations.

A4 Sheets of Paper

For more complex or longer topics, placing your notes on sheets of paper may work much better than other types of notes, simply because it allows you to write down so much more information. Just imagine trying to fit a 40-slide presentation into cue cards!

Advantages:

• Much more room for more detailed notes
• Can read verbatim in the worst-case scenario
• Can serve as a script if the presentation format allows it

Disadvantages:

• Looks very unprofessional if the presenter is standing
• Much larger and easy to drop

These little cards are an absolute wonder for many public speakers, but can also be used very effectively when doing a meeting presentation.

There are different ways to use cue cards, but the most effective way seems to be to note down the topic of discussion for that duration of the presentation and a sentence transition to move on to the next topic. Cue cards are also notoriously slippery. So don’t forget to number them just in case.

• Much smaller and easy to carry
• Barely visible, and doesn’t hurt your credibility
• Very limited space to write notes
• Can cause confusion if numbered/ordered incorrectly

Engage The Audience

According to the University of Minnesota Extension , "Tasks and processes that engage group members will help create more effective meetings and good results." Now, this should not come as a huge shock. Because if you think about it, the more you manage to engage your audience with the content, the more immersive and memorable it will be for them.

By giving your audience a chance to go beyond listening, and interact with your content, you will be establishing a basis for discussion around the topics in your presentation. This will not only make people more interested and invested in what you have to say but also work actively to find points of discussion within it.

Also, if you've ever been nervous in front of an audience, you'll understand how much of a difference it makes in terms of atmosphere when you can get the audience engaged right away. It not only helps you to gain confidence and calm your nerves, but it can also significantly improve the impact of your words.

Start Your Presentation Right

8 seconds. You have that much time to capture the interest of your audience. Between 2000 and 2015, decreased by about a quarter, and our ability to focus has since fallen behind that of the notoriously ill-focused goldfish, who are able to focus on a task or object for 9 seconds.

So clearly, the opening of your presentation has to pique the interest of your audience. Here are some ways to do that:

• Tell a story: You must engage your audience if you want to ace a presentation. The easiest approach to achieve this is to include a little story that relates to your presentation and the reason you are discussing that subject. If appropriate, you can draw the audience's attention by sharing brief, memorable anecdotes from your own experiences.

We are more likely to listen and remember information when it is presented in this way because the human brain enjoys a good story. Additionally, we are more responsive and less skeptical to the information that is about to be conveyed.

• Ask a question: Questions are one of the most interactive ways to start a presentation. You can pose a question and ask for a show of hands to maximize audience engagement.

Questions trigger a mental reflex known as “ instinctive elaboration .” When asked, they take over the mind and that may be a strong starting point for a meeting.

Typically, rhetorical questions are designed to grab the audience's attention and nudge them toward forming an opinion. Just make sure the inquiry leads them to concur with the main point of your presentation.

• Use a short icebreaker activity: Icebreakers are a creditworthy method of engaging your audience.

Our brain is very sociable and loves to engage with others. So, prepare a little icebreaker to get everyone chatting. Although they might not be crucial in terms of content, they play a crucial role in engagement.

Leave nothing to chance and be sure you thoroughly prepare your opening because it could set the tone for the rest of the meeting. A strong start to your presentation will rouse the interest of the audience while a lackluster opening invites blank stares.

Encourage Questions and Discussions

There might not always be time for questions but you should always be prepared to be broiled just in case. No matter how bad it sounds, receiving questions means that your audience is listening.

What’s more, questions allow you to clarify anything that was unclear and to expand on a specific topic that your audience is interested in or that you forgot to cover.

Try to not go through the facts in your presentation in its entirety. Instead, give your audience ample opportunity to ask questions. You can then address any issues or further explore any concepts they don't comprehend in this way.

Since the audience typically asks questions out of genuine interest rather than to trip you up, think of it as a great opportunity to consider how you may expand your work.

Making the audience active participants by encouraging questions and discussions also makes it simpler for them to remember what they've learned.

And here's something that might help if you're anxious about answering questions: If there's someone in the audience you know and trust, ask them to ask you a question. Even better, give them the question they’ll be asking. That way, you can get things started and boost your confidence.

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How to Conduct Effective Meeting Presentations?

Learn the art of conducting effective meeting presentations with our comprehensive guide.

How to Present During a Meeting?

When presenting during a meeting, utilize a visually appealing presentation template to impress your audience. Whether it's a business update, proposal pitch, or board meeting, a customizable PowerPoint or Google Slides template can keep your presentation persuasive and your audience engaged. Download popular templates for an intuitive and bold visual impact.

Craft infographics, charts, and graphs to communicate data effectively. Introduce speakers, analyze key points, and address stakeholders with an eye-catching design.

Pro tips: keep your presentation concise, address department KPIs, and be ready to communicate action items. Make your next meeting visually compelling, fully customizable, and ready for success.

What are the essential components of a successful meeting presentation?

The essential components of a successful meeting presentation encompass a blend of visual appeal, concise communication, and strategic engagement. Begin with a well-designed presentation template, whether in PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote, to set a visually impressive tone. Craft a compelling agenda that outlines key updates, proposals, or pitches, ensuring your meeting presentation aligns with the overall goal. Utilize charts, graphs, and infographics to present data clearly and persuasively. Keep your presentation customizable, allowing for adaptability to different audiences. 

Address stakeholders, introduce speakers, and analyze departmental insights with a persuasive narrative. Engage your audience with eye-catching graphics, bold visuals, and an intuitive flow. Edit lengthier content, appeal to the CEO or board of directors, and pay attention to key performance indicators (KPIs). Enable collective participation by outlining action items, hosting a productive meeting, and keeping your team updated with impactful visuals.

Key slides to include in your meeting presentation

In crafting a comprehensive meeting presentation, several key slides are essential to convey information effectively. Begin with a title slide that sets the tone and introduces the topic. Follow with an agenda slide outlining the meeting structure. Utilize an updated slide to present key information succinctly, keeping stakeholders informed. Incorporate charts and graphs for visual impact in a data slide, providing a clear representation of metrics or performance.

For proposals or pitches, a persuasive slide detailing the proposition and benefits is crucial. An interactive timeline slide can visually map out project progress or plans. Engage the audience with infographics, showcasing complex data in an accessible manner. Conclude with a summary slide, recapping key points and opening the floor for discussions or questions. These key slides collectively create a dynamic and informative presentation, ensuring your message resonates with the audience.

Tips for creating an engaging meeting presentation

Creating an engaging meeting presentation involves a strategic blend of content, visuals, and delivery. Begin by understanding your audience and tailoring your content to their interests and needs. Craft a compelling narrative that follows a logical flow, ensuring clarity and coherence. Utilize visually appealing slides with graphics, charts, and minimal text to maintain audience interest. Incorporate interactive elements like polls or Q&A sessions to actively involve participants.

Practice your delivery to ensure a confident and engaging presence during the presentation. Keep the content concise, focusing on key points to avoid overwhelming your audience. Utilize storytelling techniques to make your presentation memorable and relatable. Invite questions and discussions to foster participant engagement, turning your meeting presentation into a dynamic and interactive experience.

How to customize a meeting presentation template

Customizing a meeting presentation template allows you to tailor the content to your specific needs and style. Begin by choosing a template that aligns with the theme and purpose of your presentation. Update the title slide with your presentation's title, date, and any relevant branding. Modify the agenda slide to reflect the meeting structure and topics. Replace placeholder text and images with your content, ensuring clarity and relevance. Adjust the color scheme and fonts to match your brand or personal preferences. Add or remove slides as needed to suit the presentation's flow. Incorporate your logo and other branding elements for a professional touch.

Don't forget to review the template for consistency and coherence after customization. By personalizing each aspect, you transform a generic template into a unique and impactful meeting presentation that effectively communicates your message.

Why PowerPoint is a popular choice for meeting presentations

PowerPoint remains a popular choice for meeting presentations due to its user-friendly interface, versatility, and widespread accessibility. The software provides a straightforward platform for creating visually appealing slides, allowing presenters to integrate text, images, and multimedia seamlessly. With a plethora of built-in templates and design tools, PowerPoint enables users to craft professional-looking presentations without extensive design skills.

The compatibility of PowerPoint files across different devices and operating systems ensures easy sharing and collaboration. Its robust features, including animations, transitions, and speaker notes, enhance engagement and convey complex information effectively.

As a staple in business and educational settings, PowerPoint's familiarity and integration with various technologies make it a go-to tool for delivering impactful meeting presentations that captivate audiences and facilitate effective communication.

Pro tips for delivering an impactful presentation

Delivering an impactful presentation requires a combination of preparation, confidence, and audience engagement. Start by thoroughly understanding your content and audience. Craft a compelling narrative with a clear structure, focusing on key messages. Utilize visuals effectively, incorporating charts, graphs, and images to enhance understanding. Practice your delivery to ensure a confident and natural presentation style.

Consider the pacing of your speech and maintain eye contact to connect with your audience. Use gestures and body language to emphasize key points. Be prepared to adapt to audience reactions and questions, fostering interaction. Manage nervousness by focusing on your message and the value you bring. Lastly, seek feedback for continuous improvement. By incorporating these pro tips, you can deliver presentations that captivate and leave a lasting impact on your audience.

How can I create an effective meeting presentation template?

Creating an effective meeting presentation template involves thoughtful design and consideration of your audience and content. Begin with a clean layout that aligns with your brand or theme. Use a consistent color scheme and fonts for a professional look. Include placeholders for titles, text, and visuals, ensuring flexibility for various content types. Integrate your logo and branding elements to enhance recognition.

Prioritize simplicity, allowing for easy customization while maintaining visual appeal. Test the template's functionality and coherence, adjusting as needed. By focusing on clarity, consistency, and adaptability, you can craft a versatile meeting presentation template that streamlines the creation process and enhances overall visual impact.

Choosing the right template for your meeting

Choosing the right template for your meeting is crucial for creating a visually appealing and cohesive presentation. Consider the nature of your meeting, whether it's a formal business gathering, a creative workshop, or an educational session. Select a template that aligns with the overall theme and purpose of your presentation. Pay attention to color schemes, fonts, and layouts that complement your content and brand identity. Evaluate the template's structure, ensuring it accommodates your agenda and content flow.

Prioritize simplicity and clarity to enhance audience comprehension. Customizability is key, allowing you to adapt the template to your specific needs. By thoughtfully choosing a template that resonates with your meeting's objectives, you set the stage for a visually engaging and impactful presentation.

Customizing a meeting presentation template to fit your needs

Customizing a meeting presentation template is essential to tailor it to your specific needs and enhance its effectiveness. Begin by replacing the default content with relevant information, ensuring clarity and alignment with your presentation goals. Adjust the color scheme and fonts to match your brand or personal preferences, fostering a cohesive and professional look. Add or remove slides as necessary to accommodate your agenda and content structure. Incorporate your organization's logo and branding elements for a personalized touch. 

Fine-tune the layout to optimize visual appeal and maintain consistency throughout the presentation. Pay attention to spacing, imagery, and the overall flow to create a polished and engaging template. By adapting each element to your requirements, you transform a generic template into a powerful tool that effectively communicates your message and resonates with your audience.

Utilizing PowerPoint or other presentation software for your meeting

Leveraging presentation software like PowerPoint for your meeting provides a dynamic platform to convey information effectively. With user-friendly interfaces, these tools allow you to craft visually engaging slides that incorporate text, images, charts, and multimedia elements. PowerPoint, in particular, offers a vast array of templates, design tools, and animation features, streamlining the creation process.

The ability to customize layouts, fonts, and colors ensures alignment with your branding or theme. Presentation software enhances audience engagement through visual aids, facilitating clearer communication of complex ideas. Additionally, compatibility across devices and easy sharing options contribute to seamless collaboration.

Whether it's PowerPoint or alternative software, utilizing these tools empowers presenters to deliver polished, professional, and impactful meetings that resonate with participants.

Tip for incorporating visual aids into your meeting presentation

Incorporating visual aids into your meeting presentation enhances engagement and reinforces key messages. Begin by aligning visuals with your content, ensuring they complement rather than distract. Use high-quality images, charts, and graphs to convey complex information. Maintain a consistent design theme for a polished look. Limit text on each slide, emphasizing concise, impactful points. Integrate animations sparingly to enhance transitions and maintain audience focus. Ensure readability by selecting appropriate fonts and font sizes. Practice your presentation with visuals to refine timing and delivery. 

Be prepared to explain each visual, providing context for better comprehension. Utilizing well-designed visual aids not only reinforces your message but also captivates your audience, making your meeting presentation more memorable and impactful.

Popular templates for meeting presentations

Popular templates for meeting presentations cater to diverse needs, providing versatile options for various occasions. Business professionals often opt for clean and professional templates with minimalist designs, featuring sections for agenda, key points, and data visualization. Creative templates are favored in brainstorming or design-oriented meetings, offering dynamic layouts and space for innovative ideas.

Educational templates include interactive elements and areas for instructional content. Board meetings benefit from structured templates with designated sections for reports, updates, and discussions. Google Slides, PowerPoint, and Keynote offer an extensive array of popular templates that users can customize.

Regardless of the theme, the best templates facilitate a seamless flow, maintain visual appeal, and contribute to a cohesive and impactful meeting presentation.

What are the best practices for presenting during a meeting?

Best practices for presenting during a meeting involve thorough preparation, starting with a clear understanding of your audience and content. Craft a compelling narrative with a structured outline. Utilize visuals judiciously for clarity, and practice your delivery to enhance confidence and fluency. Maintain eye contact, use gestures purposefully, and adapt to audience reactions. Manage time effectively, allowing for Q&A.

Seek feedback for continuous improvement and always stay attuned to the needs and dynamics of the meeting. Engaging, clear, and well-organized presentations contribute to a successful meeting experience for both presenters and attendees.

Tips for keeping your audience engaged during a meeting presentation

Keeping your audience engaged during a meeting presentation is crucial for effective communication. Begin with a compelling introduction that captures attention and establishes relevance. Utilize visuals, such as slides, infographics, or videos, to convey information in a dynamic and accessible manner. Incorporate interactive elements like polls, questions, or discussions to involve participants actively. Maintain a conversational tone, avoiding monotonous delivery. Vary your presentation pace and employ gestures to emphasize key points.

Encourage audience participation through Q&A sessions or interactive activities. Break longer presentations into digestible segments to sustain interest. Lastly, be responsive to audience cues, adapting your approach based on their reactions. By employing these tips, you can create a more engaging and memorable meeting presentation experience for your audience.

How to structure your meeting presentation for maximum impact

Structuring your meeting presentation for maximum impact involves careful planning and a strategic approach.

Begin with a compelling introduction, clearly stating the purpose and relevance of your presentation. Develop a well-organized outline, dividing content into logical sections. Create a narrative flow that guides the audience through your key points seamlessly. Use visuals strategically to enhance understanding and retention. Incorporate interactive elements or discussions to maintain engagement. Ensure a smooth transition between sections, building anticipation for each segment. 

Conclude with a strong summary and a call to action if applicable. Practice your delivery to refine timing and clarity. A structured presentation not only facilitates comprehension but also captivates your audience, leaving a lasting impact.

Ways to effectively convey your message during a meeting presentation

Effectively conveying your message during a meeting presentation requires a thoughtful and strategic approach.

Begin by understanding your audience and tailoring your content to their needs and interests. Clearly define your key message and structure your presentation to emphasize these points. Use engaging visuals, such as slides or infographics, to support and enhance your verbal communication. Practice a confident and clear delivery, paying attention to tone and body language. Incorporate real-life examples or anecdotes to make your message relatable. Encourage audience interaction through questions or discussions, fostering a dynamic exchange. 

Be mindful of time management to avoid information overload. Lastly, seek feedback and be open to adjusting your approach based on the audience's response. By employing these strategies, you can ensure that your message is not only heard but also understood and remembered by your audience.

Utilizing graphs and charts in your meeting presentation

Incorporating graphs and charts into your meeting presentation is a powerful way to convey complex information visually, keeping your audience engaged and enhancing overall comprehension.

Utilize popular meeting presentation templates available in PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote for a customizable and professional layout. Graphs and charts, when strategically placed, make your presentation visually appealing and persuasive, catering to diverse learning styles. Craft infographics that provide a snapshot of key data, making it easy for your audience to grasp important insights. This visual approach adds an element of creativity to your business presentation, making it more compelling and memorable for stakeholders, including board members, corporate teams, and department heads.

Strategies for adapting your presentation to different types of meetings

Adapting your presentation to different types of meetings involves strategic planning and customization.

Begin by selecting a suitable meeting presentation template, ensuring it aligns with the specific nature and formality of the gathering, be it a board meeting, corporate event, or departmental briefing. Tailor your content to address the unique interests and expectations of your audience, incorporating persuasive elements such as graphs and charts to engage stakeholders effectively. Adjust your tone, language, and level of detail based on the formality of the meeting and the familiarity of the audience with the topic. 

Proactively address potential questions and concerns to enhance clarity. Employing these adaptive strategies ensures that your presentation resonates with various audiences, making it a valuable tool for communication in diverse meeting settings.

How to impress your audience with a meeting presentation?

Impressing your audience with a meeting presentation involves a combination of strategic planning, engaging content, and confident delivery.

Begin by selecting an eye-catching meeting presentation template that aligns with the tone of your message. Craft a compelling introduction to capture attention, clearly stating the purpose and relevance of your presentation. Utilize visually appealing elements such as graphs and charts to convey information in a digestible format. Ensure a well-organized structure that guides the audience seamlessly through key points. Practice your delivery to enhance confidence, maintaining a conversational tone and incorporating expressive gestures. Foster audience engagement through interactive elements or discussions.

Conclude with a strong and memorable summary. By combining these elements, you can leave a lasting impression on your audience, making your meeting presentation both impactful and memorable.

Creating a visually appealing meeting presentation

Creating a visually appealing meeting presentation is essential for capturing and maintaining your audience's attention.

Begin with a visually pleasing meeting presentation template, ensuring it aligns with the theme and formality of your presentation. Use a cohesive color scheme and professional fonts to enhance readability. Incorporate high-quality images, graphics, and icons to add visual interest and support key points. Utilize spacing and layout effectively to avoid clutter and maintain a clean, organized look. Consistency in design elements throughout the presentation enhances its professional appearance. Incorporating visually engaging elements not only makes your content more accessible but also contributes to a positive and memorable audience experience.

By combining these design principles, you can create a visually appealing meeting presentation that effectively conveys your message and resonates with your audience.

Delivering a persuasive pitch during a meeting presentation

Delivering a persuasive pitch during a meeting presentation requires a strategic blend of compelling content, confident delivery, and audience engagement.

Begin by clearly defining your key message and aligning it with the needs and interests of your audience. Craft a compelling narrative that includes relevant data, anecdotes, and persuasive elements. Utilize a visually appealing meeting presentation template to enhance professionalism. Practice your delivery to ensure a confident and dynamic presentation, paying attention to tone, pace, and body language. Foster audience engagement through interactive elements, questions, or discussions. Address potential concerns proactively and provide solutions.

Conclude with a strong call to action, prompting your audience to take the desired next steps. By combining these elements, you can deliver a persuasive pitch that not only captivates your audience but also motivates them to act on your proposed ideas or recommendations.

Tips for using PowerPoint to make an impactful meeting presentation

Leveraging PowerPoint effectively can significantly enhance the impact of your meeting presentation.

Begin by selecting a visually appealing meeting presentation template that aligns with your content and audience. Maintain a clean and organized layout, avoiding clutter to enhance visual clarity. Use bullet points, graphics, and charts to convey information concisely and memorably. Employ consistent fonts and color schemes for a professional look. Utilize animations and transitions judiciously to add dynamism without distracting from your message. Practice your delivery to ensure seamless integration with your slides. Incorporate impactful visuals, such as images and infographics, to support key points.

Remember that PowerPoint is a tool to complement your presentation, not overshadow it. By following these tips, you can harness the power of PowerPoint to create an impactful meeting presentation that effectively communicates your message.

Engaging your audience during a business meeting presentation

Engaging your audience during a business meeting presentation is crucial for a successful delivery.

Begin by capturing attention with a compelling introduction, clearly outlining the purpose and relevance of your presentation. Foster interaction through strategically placed questions, discussions, or audience participation activities. Utilize a visually appealing meeting presentation template to enhance engagement and maintain a professional appearance. Incorporate relatable anecdotes or case studies to make your content more accessible.

Keep your delivery dynamic by varying your tone, pace, and gestures. Address potential concerns proactively and encourage questions throughout the presentation. Emphasize the benefits or solutions your content offers to maintain audience interest. By creating an interactive and engaging atmosphere, you can ensure that your business meeting presentation resonates with your audience and effectively conveys your message.

How to make your meeting presentation memorable and effective

To make your meeting presentation memorable and effective, focus on creating a lasting impact on your audience.

Begin with a compelling story or anecdote to captivate attention from the start. Structure your content logically, emphasizing key messages and supporting them with visuals. Use a visually appealing meeting presentation template that aligns with your brand and enhances the overall experience. Incorporate memorable quotes, relevant statistics, or relatable examples to reinforce key points. Ensure a dynamic delivery by varying your tone and pace. Encourage audience interaction through questions or discussions.

Conclude with a strong and concise summary, leaving a lasting impression. Follow up with a well-designed handout or supplementary materials for reinforcement. By combining these elements, you can make your meeting presentation both memorable and effective, ensuring that your message resonates with your audience long after the presentation concludes.

Why is it important to tailor your presentation to the specific meeting?

Tailoring your presentation to the specific meeting is essential for effective communication and audience engagement. Understanding the context, goals, and expectations of the meeting allows you to customize your content, making it more relevant and impactful. This tailored approach demonstrates a commitment to meeting participants and enhances the likelihood that your message will resonate.

By aligning your presentation with the unique needs of the audience, you create a connection that fosters interest, comprehension, and retention. It also showcases adaptability and consideration, contributing to a more positive and productive meeting experience for all involved.

Adapting your meeting presentation to the audience and purpose

Adapting your meeting presentation to the audience and purpose is pivotal for a successful communication strategy. Tailor your content to suit the knowledge level, interests, and expectations of your audience.

Consider their background, industry, and specific needs to ensure relevance. Align your language and examples with their familiarity to enhance understanding. Catering to the purpose of the meeting involves clarifying whether the goal is to inform, persuade, or collaborate, and adjusting your tone and content accordingly.

A clear understanding of your audience and purpose allows you to deliver a presentation that resonates, captivates, and effectively conveys your message, fostering engagement and achieving your desired outcomes.

Addressing the specific needs and goals of the meeting in your presentation

Addressing the specific needs and goals of the meeting in your presentation is paramount for success.

Begin by understanding the objectives and expectations of the gathering. Tailor your content to directly align with these goals, ensuring that your presentation provides valuable insights, solutions, or information. Consider the unique needs of the audience and adapt your messaging to resonate with their concerns or interests. Clearly articulate how your presentation contributes to meeting objectives, whether it's to inform, persuade, or collaborate.

By directly addressing the specific needs and goals of the meeting, your presentation becomes more focused, relevant, and impactful, leading to a more meaningful and productive engagement with your audience.

Utilizing speaker notes and cues for a tailored meeting presentation

Utilizing speaker notes and cues is an effective strategy for delivering a tailored meeting presentation. Speaker notes allow you to include additional context, key points, and reminders to ensure that your message aligns with the specific needs of the audience and the goals of the meeting. These notes provide a roadmap for your delivery, helping you maintain a focused and tailored approach. Cues can include prompts for engaging the audience, emphasizing crucial points, or adjusting your tone to suit the atmosphere.

By leveraging speaker notes and cues, you enhance your ability to customize content on the fly, respond to audience reactions, and address unexpected questions, ensuring that your meeting presentation remains adaptable, relevant, and finely tuned to the unique context of each engagement.

Key strategies for customizing your meeting presentation content

Customizing your meeting presentation content involves several key strategies to ensure relevance and engagement.

Begin by understanding your audience's background, interests, and expectations. Tailor your messaging to align with their knowledge level, using language and examples they can relate to. Incorporate relevant data and insights that directly address the specific needs and challenges of your audience. Structure your presentation to match the goals of the meeting, whether it's to inform, persuade, or collaborate. Use visual aids and graphics that resonate with the audience and enhance comprehension.

Be adaptable, and ready to adjust your content based on real-time audience reactions or questions. By employing these strategies, you can create a meeting presentation that is not only customized but also impactful, fostering meaningful connections with your audience.

Why a personalized approach enhances the impact of your meeting presentation

A personalized approach significantly enhances the impact of your meeting presentation, turning it into a memorable and engaging experience.

By customizing your content using a meeting presentation template, you ensure that your message aligns with the specific needs and preferences of your audience. Tailoring your presentation to address their concerns and interests makes it more relatable and persuasive. Utilizing customizable features, such as graphs, visuals, and infographics, adds a professional touch and keeps your audience engaged. 

A personalized presentation also demonstrates your commitment to understanding the unique challenges and goals of your stakeholders, fostering a stronger connection. This approach, coupled with pro tips for impactful delivery, transforms your meeting presentation into a powerful tool for effective communication and collaboration.

Introducing Dive: The Perfect AI Companion for 2023

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With automated task allocation, real-time transcription , and insightful analytics, Dive ensures your meetings are efficient, engaging, and result-driven. Elevate collaboration and productivity with Dive and make every meeting count.

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How to Prepare for a Meeting: Step by Step (With Examples)

It’s a good idea to make sure that all bases are covered if you’re planning a meeting ahead of time, so that you know it’ll go smoothly.

But there’s plenty more to do than just getting your slides and talking points ready while you’re in preparation for the meeting.

From working out a clear structure to getting your team prepped and ready, there’s a lot to consider.

Let us walk you step-by-step through the meeting preparation process that works for us at Slido and share some of the best practices that were game-changing for us.

1. Set purpose and goals

First, define the meeting purpose, or the ‘ Why ’ behind your meeting. Why are you meeting? Is it to brainstorm? Is it to have a discussion or plan the next steps? If you set one clear objective, it’ll be much easier for you to design an agenda for your meeting.

Second, specify the main goal, or the ‘ What ’ of the meeting. What should come out of the meeting? What is the main deliverable? Set a tangible meeting outcome and stick to it. If it’s to make a decision about X, don’t leave the meeting without seeing it through.

These will be the guideposts that will help you set the right expectations and steer the meeting in the right direction.

2. Create & share an agenda

Now that you’ve set your meeting objectives and goals, it’s time to create a bulletproof agenda.

A meeting agenda is an outline of all the activities and discussion points to cover during a meeting in order to reach the meeting goal/s. In short, a structure that your meeting will follow.

While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all meeting agenda template, there are several best practices to keep in mind when designing an agenda for a) recurring and b) one-time/first-time meetings.

Recurring meetings

With meetings that you run regularly – e.g. team syncs – it is tempting to think there’s no need for an agenda. Your colleagues already know the format, so what’s there to design? Well, there are still things to consider.

The main keyword here is simplicity . A simple agenda goes a long way and will hold your meeting together like a skeleton. All you need is a list of action points to go through.

Write down the main discussion points that you want to touch on during the meeting. You can even assign owners that will drive the discussion around each point.

Here’s an example from one of our meetings:

💡 Don’t forget to share the agenda with your team members ahead of the meeting (1-3 days) via your internal comms channels, such as Slack, Webex, or Microsoft Teams.

One-time meetings/First-time meetings

With new meetings for which you don’t have an already established format, you need to go deeper. In these instances, you need to design the whole meeting agenda from scratch.

The main keyword here is alignment . Given that your team members don’t know the format, it’s crucial to:

• Communicate clearly the purpose, expectations and goals of the meeting
• Describe the structure and length
• Explain what needs to be prepared and what the responsibilities of each member are
• Crowdsource any questions or discussion points in advance of the meeting

If there are multiple speakers who will present at the meeting, align with them prior to the meeting. Set a time frame for each of the meeting sections. Be as specific as possible.

Get inspired by our first-ever ‘Cross-team alignment’ meeting, for which we set a very bold objective — to bring together 3 teams (20+ people) and get them aligned .

A lot also depends on the size of the meeting. If you’re preparing an all-company meeting, there’s a whole different strategy to employ. Read more about how to design an all-hands meeting agenda here .

3. Send out meeting invites

Send meeting invites to everyone involved in the meeting at least two weeks in advance so your colleagues have enough time to work it into their schedules.

Add all the important details in the meeting invite description. Share the meeting goals and the agenda (regardless of whether you already shared it or plan to share it later – make it available in the invite as well).

In case you’re meeting online or in a hybrid setup , also include the link to the video conference call so that nobody can miss it, and can easily access it via their calendars.

Here’s an example of a meeting invite for our summer brainstorming session:

💡 For even better invites, add links to Slido so you can start collecting people’s input , like questions or ideas before the meeting. Learn more in the next point.

4. Collect questions and ideas from your team

Gathering input from the team members before the meeting works well with some meeting formats.

Brainstorming & planning

For example, if you’re having a brainstorming session or a planning meeting, start collecting your team members’ ideas beforehand. Attach a link to Slido to the meeting agenda or to the meeting invite and ask your colleagues to type their ideas into the app.

This gives your colleagues a safe space for submitting their ideas and levels the playing field – everyone can contribute equally , even the ones who fear speaking up in the meeting. They can even do so anonymously if they wish.

Plus, it’s more efficient than brainstorming during the meeting. It allows you to review all the submissions before the meeting and then spend the meeting time discussing and prioritizing.

In preparation for our meetings at Slido we use this technique a lot:

Retrospective meetings

A team retrospective is another meeting type where you can benefit greatly from collecting insights beforehand.

Send a stop-start-continue survey for your participants to fill out in advance.

Go through people’s submissions and look for patterns, items mentioned repeatedly, or any other important feedback. This way, you can identify the most burning issues which you can then use to create an agenda, and drive discussions during the meeting.

Create your own poll or survey in Slido and hear from everyone. Sign up below and try it for yourself.

Sign up for free

All company meetings/All team meetings

Larger meetings such as all-hands, town halls, or strategic team meetings provide an opportunity to address questions or concerns that your team members might have. Give your team a chance to post their questions into Slido even before the meeting.

You can then address them during the meeting – either in a dedicated Q&A session , or address them continuously throughout.

We start collecting questions from our employees about a week before every company all-hands meeting .

This way, our executive team has time to prepare their answers and our colleagues have a chance to go through the submitted questions and upvote the ones they identify with. We also give our colleagues a chance to ask anonymously which means our leadership gets more honest questions.

You can find more tips and ideas for all-hands meetings at our all-hands hub .

Read also: How to Host More Effective Meetings by Collecting Input in Advance

5. Distribute supporting materials

If there’s material that you want your meeting participants to review before the meeting, or if there’s something that you want your team to prepare, communicate it well in advance. You may, for instance, add it as an attachment to your meeting invite or share it in your internal comms channel.

It’s good for getting everyone aligned and familiar with the forthcoming discussion.

However, it’s good practice to clarify expectations and make a clear distinction between what’s a must  and what’s nice to have . Perhaps not everyone needs to read through a 50-slides-long presentation. Sometimes, it’s enough to get a gist of what will be discussed.

6. Prepare your slides

Getting the slide deck ready is a drill you surely know very well, but here are a few tips that can make your life a little easier.

• Apply a minimalistic approach to your slides. Keep them simple – one idea/one number/one sentence per slide. People don’t want to read huge bodies of text on slides. Plus, it’s more visually appealing.
• Use the ‘Rule of three’ method – three bullet points, three columns, etc. It’s easier for people to process
• Cut the number of slides too. Spend the meeting time on a fruitful discussion rather than going through an 80-slides-long presentation.
• Use visuals like images, graphs, tables, etc. Preferable to making people read, apply the ‘show & tell’ approach – show something visual and describe what people are looking at.
• If there will be multiple presenters at your meeting, have one master deck. Share it with all the contributors before the meeting and ask them to add their slides there. It’s much smoother than switching presentation decks.
• As you prepare slides for your meeting, think of all the points of interaction with your meeting participants (see the next point). For instance, you can insert live polls directly into your slide deck with Slido for Google Slides and Slido for PowerPoint .

7. Create opportunities for interaction

When designing a meeting, create multiple ‘ interaction points ’ – the spots on the agenda where you purposefully create a space for your meeting participants to actively contribute.

This is important for creating meaningful engagement throughout your meeting. If you let your participants sit passively through the meeting, you will eventually lose their attention.

Forbes reports that the average person loses focus within 10 minutes.

If, on the other hand, you give them space to be actively involved in the meeting, you will engage them.

So, how do you create these interaction points?

Go through your meeting agenda and think about at which point it would make sense to hear from your participants.

For example, after you’ve brainstormed some ideas for projects, ask your teammates: “Which of these projects do you think we should prioritize in the next quarter?”

Turn it into an interactive poll . Add your project ideas as options in a multiple choice or a ranking poll and let your teammates vote.

It’s a way to make your meetings more democratic – you’ll give everyone a voice – and engaging – you’ll involve everyone in co-creating the meeting and influencing its outcomes.

Learn more about how to create interaction spots in your presentation here .

💡 You can add a Slido poll, quiz, or Q&A directly into your slide deck with Slido’s integration with PowerPoint and Google Slides – it will be added as a separate interactive slide. You can manage every interaction as you click through the slides.

8. Prepare the opening

How you kick off the meeting may lay the foundations for the rest of the meeting, so leave nothing to chance and make sure to prepare your opening well.

Welcome everyone; if your meeting includes remote participants, give them a special greeting to make them feel included from the start.

To loosen people up, prepare a little icebreaker, using our selection of icebreaker questions , or, if you need a quick interactive activity that will get people talking, fire up a fun poll question .

For example, check the mood in the room and ask your colleagues how they feel in a word cloud poll . You can even let them express their feelings in emojis.

Use the poll results to trigger a small chit-chat at the start – it’s good to start the meeting with a bit of socializing, and make sure to ask open-ended questions if you want to get people really talking.

Once you kick off the official part, provide a quick context for why you’re meeting up today and briefly run people through the agenda once again.

9. Set up the meeting

Lastly, make sure you have the meeting room arrangements figured out – whether you’re meeting in an actual room or in a virtual one.

Meeting room: Face-to-face meeting

• Book a meeting room and add the room number in the meeting invite or write it in your team’s internal comms channel so everyone knows where it is you’ll be meeting.
• Consider the number of participants;  make sure everyone will have a place to sit. Arrange some extra chairs just to be safe – more is better than less.
• Make sure the seating doesn’t favor anyone – everyone should feel equal and able to contribute. Ensure everyone can hear each other well. If it’s a large meeting, ensure there’s a microphone at people’s disposal.
• Arrange for refreshments; at least supply water, so people don’t need to leave the room to get a drink.

Meeting room: Hybrid meeting

• Book a room with a large screen and a tech setup that allows for a conference call with good audio and video.
• Good audio is key . Make sure that all participants – both on-site and remote – can see and hear each other well. If your online colleagues can’t hear what’s happening in the room, they’ll have trouble joining the discussion. Ensure all your meeting rooms are equipped with quality external speakers.
• Have microphones available in the meeting room to make sure everybody online can hear their on-site colleagues if they speak up. This is important especially for meetings with a larger number of participants.
• Check if people online can hear you well . Everybody has to hear everything – and feel like they’re heard.

Online room: Fully remote meeting

• Make sure everyone has easy access to the video conferencing link where the meeting will happen. Share the link in your team’s internal comms channel or in a calendar invite (see point #3).
• Send a meeting reminder via your team’s internal comms channel some 5 minutes before the meeting.
• Start the video conference a couple of minutes early , to avoid any delays. Test the audio and troubleshoot any potential tech issues.
• Ensure every participant can hear you well as people start joining the call. You can do a little ‘thumbs up’ check – just ask your participants to put their thumbs up if they hear you well.
• Encourage people to turn on their cameras so your meeting feels more personal.

Ready to kick off your meeting?

The quality of pre-meeting preparation can make or break your meeting. You can never be over-prepared. But fail to prepare at your own peril.

With the tips that we’ve shared above, you will be 9 steps closer to a stellar meeting . We wish you good luck.

And in the meantime, go ahead and try Slido for free. Start by adding one or two polls to your meeting presentation to keep your team members actively engaged . You can always add more later.

Here’s to better meetings! 🥂

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How to Prepare for a Presentation, with Examples

February 15, 2021 - Dom Barnard

This guide covers everything you need to know to prepare for your presentation. including what you need to think about beforehand, during and after the presentation.

1. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse (always aloud)

Once you have your presentation worked out, you will need to practice it, but even though you might think it’s the best way to have a flawless presentation, don’t memorise what you’re going to say.

That might sound like incredibly bad advice, but here’s why:

• If you memorise your speech, you’ll get stuck in thinking you can only deliver your ideas in that way, and that stifles your creativity, and the chance for new thoughts and ways to put things that come up as you speak.

Not only that, but every  audience is different . Sometimes they laugh out loud, sometimes they sit and smile, and you never know which type of audience you’ll have until you’re live.

Practice Presentation Skills

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If you’re going off a memorised presentation, it’s much more difficult to break away from that to go with the flow on the day, and respond naturally to your audience.

• If you forget your speech in the middle of it, you will be thrown, and you’ll have more chance of complete brain freeze, which really will knock your confidence.
• Memorising your presentation gives you a false sense of security, which could leave you high and dry if something goes wrong. If you’ve only got your memorised speech, for example, what will you do if your PowerPoint freezes or your props break, and you can’t do what you were going to do?

Rehearse in front of colleagues, friends, a mirror, in virtual reality – always aloud. Make sure you spend plenty of time practising your presentation, it will make you feel much more relaxed if you know your material.

Courses where you can rehearse with interactive exercises:

• Essential Public Speaking
• How to Present over Video

Video showing how you can prepare for your presentation using virtual reality.  Learn more about virtual reality training .

2. Memorise your opening line

Do, however, memorise your opening line. If you know how you’re going to begin, you’ll get a strong start and that will build your confidence.

Many speakers and stage actors find that the minute they’ve actually delivered their first line, the nerves are gone and they’re well into their stride.

3. Practise your speech from written notes

Writing your presentation out in your own handwriting will help you clarify your ideas and may well bring you new ones.

• How to Write a Speech to Engage your Audience

4. Practise presentation flow

As well as practising for the ideas and what you want to say, practise how you want your presentation to flow. Think of it almost as a symphony, with high points, slow movements and crescendos. If it’s important, think about how you want your audience to feel, what emotions you want them to have, and when.

5. The power of silence

Don’t be afraid to pause and use the power of silence. A good pause can have a huge emotional impact. It allows people to really absorb what you are saying and react, and it’s vital to pause if you’re using humour so that the next part of your presentation doesn’t get lost underneath people’s laughter.

For more on the ‘Power of the Pause’, watch this short from video Brian Tracy:  The Power of the Pause

• 10 Effective Ways to use Pauses in your Speech

6. Have a backup

There’s nothing worse than the projector dying or finding that your laptop won’t communicate with the projector for some reason. If you know you have a backup, even if it’s only a pre-prepared flip chart, you’ll feel better, and you’ll be more confident.

7. Arrive early

Following on from that, arrive at least half an hour early so you aren’t feeling rushed, and so you have time to check your equipment and get your notes laid out ready to go. That gives you time to breathe and relax before you go on, knowing everything is as set as it can be.

8. Use physical props for a demo

Use physical props, if possible, for a demo. This can make you stand out and be more memorable among all the other speakers who only use PowerPoint, and it can add greatly to the impact of your presentation.

Video showing an example of using physical props during a live demo.

9. Structure your presentation

First, find out how much time you have to present, is it 10 minutes, 15, an hour? Prepare enough material for this time and have a couple of extra slides as backup – we tend to speak much quicker when nervous so you might find you finish your presentation too early. At some large conference events, timings may change on the day, be aware of this have a shorter version of your presentation in mind (i.e. know which slides to skip over).

• How to Structure your Presentation, with Examples
• Examples of Corporate Presentation Structures

10. Prepare for questions

Have a few backup slides for questions you think will arise from your presentation. It is sometime a tactic to explain a section briefly in your speech, so that you get a question about it afterwards. If you don’t understand the question, ask for it to be rephrased.

If there are no questions, it is not an indication how good or bad your presentation was. You many have explain your material extremely well, or simply that people are tired at the end of the day and want to go home.

• Guide for Handling Questions after a Presentation

11. Prepare for where you are presenting

If you can, go to the room you are speaking in before the actual event. It gives you an idea of furniture layout, podium height, location, room size, audience size and lighting. You can then visualise the room while practising and avoid the shock of suddenly being faced with a huge room when you expected a tiny one.

Ask the organiser if you need any particular props, for example a table to help with your live demo.

Additional planning to think about before your presentation:

1. Purpose  – what outcome are we trying to achieve? How can results be measured? What will success look like?

2. Topic  – Novelty? Complexity? Technical?

3. People  – Who should attend? What do they already know? How are they going to help?

4. Timing  – When will it happen and how long will the presentation take?

5. Location  – Where will the presentation be held? Do you have access to the correct facilities for the presentation?

6. Papers  – Who is keeping minutes? Do you need to send out an agenda before the presentation? Background information required?

7. Visual aids  – Is a  projector required ? Boards?

8. Style  – Structure or unstructured, discussion style? How assertive should you be? How should the meeting items be organised?

12. Choose the signals to give to your audience

Before the presentation, think about these 5 topics:

• Eye contact
• Facial gestures
• Body language

Decide how you will use each of these to reinforce your message. Use the table below for help.

Additional courses to help you prepare for your presentation:

• Presentation Skills Training Courses

Example from Steve Jobs

Think about these 10 techniques while you are preparing your presentation..

• Planning in Analog.  Tell a story, create stunning visuals and videos to complement video, use demonstrations and other speakers, keep the audience engaged.
• Creating a Twitter-Friendly Description  Single description sentence, condensed his message into 140 characters.
• Introduce the Enemy  Story needs villains or a problem to be solved. Jobs highlighted IBM and useless mobile phones (during iPhone release) as his villains.
• Focusing on Benefits  Keep reinforcing the benefits of your product, create top 10 lists, understand this is what customers care about.
• Sticking to Rule of Three  Classic Literary technique, things are best remembered and reinforced in threes. Read this article on  Literary Techniques  for more detail.
• Sell Dreams, Not Products  Create a vision people believe in, create a vision which will make people’s lives better
• Create Visual Slides  Use as few words as possible and use colourful graphics on the slide to highlight points.
• Make Numbers Meaningful  Compare large numbers to things people understand.
• Use Plain English  Use easy to say and easy to remember words, keep it simple.
• Large Reveals  Due to Apple secrecy, Jobs was able to deliver unexpected products to the world at his product launches.

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8.7: Making a Presentation for a Meeting

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Learning OUtcomes

• Create a presentation intended for a business meeting

With perspective on the technical tools, communications planning and information design, let’s take this learning for a test drive.

What’s considered an effective (that is, persuasive) presentation structure hasn’t changed fundamentally over the centuries. In his analysis of dramatic structure in the Poetics , Aristotle identified a play as having three parts: a beginning, middle and end. The story begins with a “complication” (problem), ends with an “unraveling” (resolution), and follows a logical sequence of events from beginning to end. Hollywood screenwriters use the same structure and dynamics. Screenwriter, producer and author Syd Field, whom CNN called “the guru of all screen writers,” translated this simple three-step structure into numerous books and workbooks, including the bestsellers Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting and The Screenwriter’s Workbook .

In a business context, a good presentation is an effective presentation. That is, a good presentation achieves its intended outcome. Clearly, in order to achieve a specific outcome or objective, you need to know what it is. So, prior to crafting the drama (in word or slide), you need to hone in on three things:

• The purpose of your presentation
• Your audience
• Your (one) message

For a review of these elements, refer to What’s my Presentation About .

Once you’re clear on those points, let’s proceed.

To build our presentation, we’ll use presentation expert Nancy Duarte’s interpretation of the classic 3-part story structure illustrated in Figure 1. For additional perspective on this structure, watch her TED Talk, “ The Secret Structure of Great Talks, ” or read her Harvard Business Review article, “ Structure Your Presentation Like a Story .”

The Beginning

The story starts with “What is”—the current state. Describe this baseline state in a way that is recognizable to the audience. This allows you and the audience to get in sync. And with this base level of agreement, your audience will be more receptive to your proposed change.

The second step is to introduce “What could be.” The gap between what is and what could be adds tension and drama to your story and largely determines the significance of your presentation. If there’s no conflict, no proposed change, what’s the point of the presentation?

Let’s say you’re an analyst on the new product development team of a retailer known for exclusive, trend-forward “house” branded products. Your company’s reputation and revenue depends on consistent introduction of new consumer-product goods. Marketing and distribution are key strengths, but new-product performance is off, revenue is below expectations and the company’s stock price recently fell 30 percent. Within your company, R&D (research & development) is strictly an insider’s game; any ideas or innovations that weren’t developed in-house are blocked. The problem is, you can’t innovate fast enough—or with enough market demand accuracy—to meet financial and stock market expectations. You and the other analysts on your team have been tracking innovation trends and successes and you think the answer is opening the R&D works to outside ideas and innovations. Here’s how you might lay out your presentation:

• What Is: We missed our quarterly earnings numbers, largely due to a failure to meet our innovation success targets over the last six months.
• What Could Be: Initial data suggests we could get back on track by modifying our R&D model to incorporate external innovations.

The bulk of your the presentation is developing the contrast between what is and what could be in order to set up your proposed resolution of the conflict or challenge. The objective is also to establish the validity of your arguments, so your proposed call to action is perceived as a logical, ideally inevitable, conclusion of the conflict.

• What Is: We currently bear the full cost and risk of developing new products and our innovation success rate—the percentage of new products that meet financial objectives—is running 25 percent below target.
• What Could Be: Sourcing promising innovations from outside the company could reduce R&D costs and risk while also increasing our innovation success rate.
• What Is: Our R&D process is taking so long that we’re missing trends and losing our market-leading brand reputation.
• What Could Be: We could license or buy promising innovations for a fraction of the cost it would take to develop them from scratch and leverage our marketing and distribution strengths to claim shelf and market share.
• What Is: Our below-plan performance and new product pipeline is costing us political capital with executive management, and we’re at risk of losing budget and/or layoffs.
• What Could Be: Adopting an open innovation culture would allow us to create partnerships that leverage our strengths and drive revenue, regaining a position of value within the company.

To craft a powerful close, heed Duarte’s advice and avoid a list of bullet point to-dos. Your objective here is to achieve resolution of the conflict introduced at the beginning, to issue a call to action that inspires your audience to support your vision of what could be, a state Duarte refers to as the “new bliss.”

Call to Action

To recover our position of a source of revenue and brand value, we need to start working to build a culture and networks that support open innovation and accelerate the development of new products, regardless of the source of the idea.

Our ability to drive value secures our position and reputations in the company, and in the marketplace, and pays off in employee stock value and profit sharing.

The new bliss articulates the proposed—and a desired future state—incorporating the WIIFM, what’s in it for me, that motivates your audience to buy into and work to support the required change.

Practice Question

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• Making a Presentation for a Meeting. Authored by : Nina Burokas. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Persuasive storytelling graphic. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

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19 Top Presentation Tips for Work

You found our list of the best  presentation tips for work.

Presentation tips are strategies that help workers deliver effective presentations. For example, planning ahead, understanding your audience, and using engaging narratives. The purpose of these tips is to make a positive impact during presentations. These tips are also known as “giving presentations at work” and “how to prepare for presentations.”

These presentation tips for work are related to team building PowerPoint topics , team meeting ideas , and public speaking tips .

This list includes:

• giving presentations at work
• business presentation tips
• how to prepare for presentations
• work slideshow tips
• work presentation skills
• how to make interesting slides

Let’s get to it!

List of presentation tips for work

From planning ahead to motivating your audience, here is our list of the best tips for giving great presentations.

1. Plan Ahead

Planning ahead is crucial when giving presentations at work. This process involves outlining key points, organizing materials, and practicing delivery. By taking the time to plan in advance, you can ensure a more polished and effective presentation.

Planning also allows for adjustments and improvements before the actual delivery. Practicing leads to a more confident performance. Successful presentations often result from careful planning and preparation.

2. Understand Your Audience

Knowing your audience is an important part of delivering an effective presentation. Before your speech, research the demographics, interests, and expectations of your listeners. Then, you can tailor your content accordingly. This step fosters engagement and ensures your audience receives your message positively. Understanding your audience leads to more impactful presentations.

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3. Research the Topic

Selecting a research topic is vital when preparing for work presentations. Your topic should interest you and meet your audience’s needs. Having a strong idea is essential for delivering a compelling presentation. While writing, think about the relevance, depth, and potential impact of the topic on your audience. By being thoughtful, you can add engagement and value to your presentation. By dedicating time to choosing the right research topic, you establish a strong foundation for your presentation.

4. Make Effective Slides

When wondering how to make interesting slides, be sure to be short and sweet. Effective slides are the cornerstone of making strong presentations. Slides should have concise and relevant info that matches your speech. Bullet points, charts, and images can help you share your image clearly. To avoid distracting from your points, avoid overcrowding slides with text or too many visuals. By making visually interesting and informative slides, you can capture the audience’s attention.

5. Use Presentation Tools

Tools for presentations are crucial for making engaging and polished presentations at work. These tools include software like Microsoft PowerPoint and online platforms like Prezi or Canva. These platforms provide various features, such as templates, animations, and collaboration options. By using presentation tools well, folks can give powerful presentations that connect with their audience. Plus, these tools can make it easy to create your slides.

6. Share Engaging Narratives

Narratives offer a compelling way to connect with your audience. By telling an engaging story, you can provide valuable insights in a memorable way. Stories should be relevant, easy to follow, and emotionally resonant. Adding personal anecdotes can humanize the information.

Also, using stories in your presentations can make them more digestible and engaging. An interesting narrative ties up facts and figures, making them easier to remember. Sharing your content through stories also promotes emotional connections. These bonds encourage audience engagement and open discussions. This tip makes your presentation informative and engaging.

7. Focus on Body Language

Body language is one of the most vital work presentation skills. This type of communication involves gestures, facial expressions, and posture. For instance, maintaining strong eye contact and open body positioning can build trust. Being aware of your body language can improve your presentation skills. Further, this behavior demonstrates professionalism in different work environments.

8. Control Your Voice

Controlling your voice is essential for work presentations. Speaking clearly and confidently is key to sharing your message with the audience. Monitoring your tone and volume helps emphasize important points and keeps listeners engaged. Practicing proper pronunciation and enunciation improves speech clarity. Improving voice control can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your work presentations.

9. Use Humor

Adding humor to presentations can engage the audience and enhance content retention. A well-timed joke or light-hearted story is one of the work slideshow tips that can create a relaxed atmosphere. Humor should suit the context and match the overall tone of the presentation. Ultimately, humor should support your message without overshadowing it. By using humor thoughtfully, presenters can connect with their audience and maintain their interest. Thoughtful humor can also simplify complex information in a more entertaining way. From clever comments to amusing visuals, humor can make presentations more enjoyable.

For example, here are icebreaker jokes .

10. Manage Your Time

Effective time management is key to giving great work presentations. While writing your speech, be sure to keep your time frame in mind. On average, it is a good idea to spend around two minutes on each slide. For instance, for a 20-minute presentation, you can make ten slides. Following this structure can keep you on track. You can balance information by trimming stories, prioritizing key points, and rehearsing your speech. These steps will ensure smooth transitions. Well-managed time helps with message clarity, engagement, and professionalism.

Learn time management tips .

11. Practice

Practicing your presentation is crucial to success. You can start by honing your content and then rehearse aloud often. Before the final presentation, practice in front of friends or colleagues to get feedback. Then, you can make adjustments as needed.

Practice also helps you engage your audience with better articulation and confidence. By rehearsing, you will improve your flow and create a more polished final product.

12. Accept Feedback

Accepting and using feedback is essential to creating a strong speech. This process helps you identify areas that need improvement and share your message effectively. Once you complete your slides, perform your presentation for coworkers and friends. These listeners can offer notes that can foster your growth. It is important to remember that constructive criticism is supposed to help you. Being resilient on this front can improve your presentation skills.

Read about constructive criticism .

13. Interact with Audiences

Interaction is one of the most important business presentation tips. You can engage the audience with questions or tasks to maintain interest. Body language, eye contact, and Q&A sessions can create connections. This interaction fosters a dynamic atmosphere, improves the discussion, and enables better understanding. Ensuring two-way communication makes your presentation highly effective and memorable.

14. Use Visual Aids

Images, charts, and graphs can improve a presentation by showing data or concepts visually. Using visual aids can help the audience grasp information and remember important points. When used well, visual aids can make a presentation more interesting and memorable for viewers. To prevent overwhelming the audience with excessive information, keep visual aids clear.

15. Overcome Nerves

Experiencing nervousness before a presentation is common. One way to overcome these nerves is by preparing well. For instance, make sure you have a deep understanding of your topic and rehearse your delivery. Also, practicing slow, deep breaths can help calm your nerves. Deep breathing can also improve your focus throughout the presentation. Feeling nervous is normal and can actually improve your performance by keeping you attentive.

16. Address Questions

Answering questions during a presentation is essential for sharing information. These sessions engage your audience and clear up any uncertainties they may have. When you respond to questions, it is crucial to be brief and confident in your responses. Before replying, take a moment to think about the question to ensure you give a clear answer. Questions provide an opportunity to showcase your knowledge and expertise on the subject. By addressing questions well, you show your grasp of the topic and establish credibility with your audience.

17. Stand Out

To stand out in a work presentation, you should engage your audience from the beginning. For this process, start with an interesting opening that captures the viewers’ attention. Then, use visual aids like slides or props to help folks remember important points. Finally, keep eye contact with your audience and show confident body language. By using these tactics, you can leave a lasting impact and help your message connect with your coworkers or customers.

18. Leave Strong Impressions

Closure in a presentation is the speaker’s way of concluding their talk. This step leaves a lasting impression on the audience. During these final moments, you can summarize important points and provide a call to action. Another closing option is finishing with a thought-provoking quote. A powerful closure can emphasize core concepts and encourage deeper thinking among listeners.

Here are good opening and closing statements for meetings .

19. Evaluate Your Performance

When wondering how to prepare for presentations in the future, be sure to take time after each speech to analyze it.

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself:

• Were you clear and concise?
• Did you engage the audience?
• How was your body language and eye contact?

Evaluating your performance will help you identify strengths and areas for improvement. In addition, you should seek constructive feedback from your peers to enhance your presentation skills.

Examples of presentation topics

You can give workplace presentations on several topics.

Here are a few examples:

• Financial Planning : This presentation covers the basics of budgeting, saving, investing, and managing finances. Attendees will learn to achieve short-term and long-term financial goals.
• Effective Communication : Explore strategies and techniques for clear, concise, and impactful communication in the workplace. These tips foster better collaboration and understanding among team members.
• Project Management Essentials : Share essential skills and tools for planning, executing, and monitoring projects effectively. These methods ensure successful completion within scope, budget, and timeline.
• Customer Service Excellence : Teach techniques for providing exceptional customer service, building customer loyalty, and resolving issues.
• Team Building and Collaboration : Explore methods for fostering a positive team environment. Talks can promote trust, cooperation, and synergy among team members to achieve collective goals.
• Presentation Skills : Develop confidence and proficiency in delivering engaging and persuasive presentations. Learn to use effective visuals and engaging storytelling techniques.
• Time Management Hacks : Discuss practical strategies and tools for prioritizing tasks, minimizing distractions, and maximizing productivity.
• Leadership Development : Explore key principles of leadership, including communication, decision-making, motivation, and delegation.
• Conflict Resolution Strategies : Cover common sources of conflict in the workplace, and learn techniques for resolving conflicts.
• Stress Management Techniques : Talk about coping mechanisms and relaxation strategies to effectively manage workplace stress. This presentation promotes mental health and well-being.

No matter which topic you cover, these presentation tips will help you succeed.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the art of presenting at work can improve your professional impact. By adding these tips to your routine, you can become more confident in delivering presentations. Effective presentations should engage and inspire your audience. The more you present, the better you will become at it. By refining your skills and striving for continuous improvement, you can become a presentation pro.

Next, check out our posts on conference breakout session ideas and lunch and learn topics .

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FAQ: Presentation tips for work

Here are frequently asked questions about presentation tips for work.

What are some good tips for presentations at work?

Several tips can help you create strong workplace presentations. Examples include time management, presentation tools, and planning ahead.

How can you make presentations more engaging?

To make presentations more engaging, consider using storytelling to share your points. Visual aids like graphs or images can also illustrate points clearly. Q&A sessions can help clarify your points and add an element of interaction.

What tools can you use for better work presentations?

Several tools can help you make your presentations. For instance, Prezi offers a zoomable canvas, Google Slides is great for easy collaboration, and Canva has a wide range of templates.

What are some strategies to overcome presentation nerves?

Nerves are common before giving a presentation. To help beat the stress, practice your speech several times, focus on the message, and take plenty of deep breaths.

How can you use humor in work presentations?

Relevant jokes or stories are a great way to add humor to a presentation. Funny visuals and slides are another option. However, it is important to ensure the humor is appropriate and does not detract from the message.

Author: Michael Alexis

CEO at teambuilding.com. I write about my experience working with and leading remote teams since 2010.

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The Ultimate Guide to Giving Virtual Presentations on Zoom

Part 1: an introduction to giving virtual presentations on zoom.

PART I Introduction 1 – Cool Zoom Features 2 – Virtual Presentation Do’s 3 – Virtual Presentation Don’ts PART II 4 – Presentation Purpose 5 – Structure & Flow 6 – Slide Design PART III 7 – Connect with the audience 8 – Audience Participation 9 – Sharing Content PART IV 10 – Video & Audio Recordings 11 – Post-production 12 – Your Phone as a Webcam PART V 13 – When Things Go Wrong 14 – How to Ground Yourself PART VI 15 – Advanced Techniques 16 – Zoom Webinars vs Meetings 17 – 23 Essential Settings

There are three things I hate about Zoom…

#1 the super awkward must-click-two-buttons-to-leave-the-meeting debacle.

You say goodbye, search the bottom-right corner of the screen for the red button, click the red button, continue to stare awkwardly at the corner of the screen because the call is still open and you need to click a second red button.

Never fear, this can be turned off. In General Preferences simply uncheck the “Ask me to confirm when I leave a meeting” setting and poof! One-click exits. You’re welcome.

#2 Inviting someone and never knowing what the difference is between these two options: “Copy invite link” and “Copy invitation”.

I can sense you nodding along with me.

Just remember that it’s “invite link” you want 99% of the time vs “invitation”, and you can set an option that copies the link to your clipboard as soon as you start a meeting.

#3 The dropdown to change video settings is part of the “Stop Video” button. What the actual?!

Are you trying to make me screw up my presentation?

I also love Zoom.

Why? Because it works.

A year into our forced isolation, Zoom fatigue has set in. We’re avoiding calls and talking about concepts like Zoom holidays, just to get a break.

But the answer isn’t fewer Zoom calls, it’s better Zoom calls. Almost every Zoom presentation is boring, ugly, terribly structured, poorly executed, and designed to make you fall asleep.

In this guide I’ll show you

• How to create beautiful slides that communicate with clarity and class
• Unknown and awesome features of Zoom that you can use to your advantage
• How to overcome your nerves and survive technical problems
• And how to look like a total pro every time you give a presentation—or run a meeting—on the platform we all love to hate.

Note: for the sake of brevity, unless I’m talking about Zoom-specific functionality, these tips are applicable to any platform that offers meeting and presentation software such as GotoMeeting, Google Meet, Webinar Jam etc.

There are instructional videos throughout the guide to demonstrate the best parts in more depth. You can binge watch the videos on the “Presenting on Zoom” video channel here , or read on for the word and pictures.

If you want to stand out from your peers it’s good to understand the full power of the platform and know the features most people don’t know about.

#1 Set up your own configurable ‘personal meeting room’

It can be really distracting to hear a bunch of people talking over one another when you kick off a meeting. A good solution is to use what’s called a Personal Meeting ID (PID) which gives you control of the Zoom environment right from the start.

Features of your PID include:

• Using the same invite ID and URL whenever you start a meeting, bypassing the need to repeatedly check the settings. Note: because it’s a permanent URL,you should uncheck the “Allow participants to join anytime” setting to prevent randoms dropping in unannounced.
• Placing participants into a “waiting room” which lets them in when you are ready to begin– either individually or all at once.
• Automatically recording your meetings on your computer. Having a video of your presentation is always a good idea so you can re-use your content.

#2 Press the ‘spacebar to temporarily un-mute yourself’

You can help to ensure a quality audio recording by placing everyone on mute by default. And while this feature is more appropriate for meetings vs. presentations, it’s a great thing to know about – and to tell your audience about. It’s easy to use, hold down the spacebar to un-mute yourself and let it go to turn your audio off again. It prevents people from forgetting to re-mute when they walk off to do something else forcing you to listen to their snoring dog or screaming baby.

Even if it doesn’t get used during your presentation (unless it’s a workshop you won’t want people to randomly chime in), many of your audience will thank you for learning this tip.

Note: You may need to enable it in your Zoom Preferences.

#3 Record ‘separate audio files’ for each speaker, host, or panelist in the presentation

If you have a host or a co-presenter there will be content in the session that’s not yours. Having separate audio recordings lets you use only the audio that was from your part of the presentation.

You can enable this in Preferences > Recording.

#4 Enable the ‘non-verbal feedback’ feature to allow audience interactions

Cool zoom feature #4 – enable non-verbal feedback.

To make your presentations interactive you can enable the non-verbal feedback feature. This allows participants to express reactions to your presentation.

This is not to be confused with ‘meeting reaction emojis’ which are temporary reactions that disappear after 5 seconds. To be honest, it’s hard not to be confused when there are two sets of interactions with different names.

Non-verbal feedback is for direct feedback to the speaker or host that others can agree with by clicking the same icon. The result is that the speaker can see how many people are expressing the feedback.

The options for non-verbal feedback are shown in the image below:

An example of how this would be used in a presentation is to ask the speaker to speed up or slow down. This might seem like a weird thing to be told during your talk, and if it’s just one person asking you’d most likely ignore it. But if 50 people are saying to slow down, that’s a pretty good indication that your current presentation style isn’t working for them.

It provides a pretty amazing insight – something I wish I’d had that feedback during an on-stage talk.

You can also use it to ask binary questions to the audience that they can respond yes or no to – a great way to segment the audience so you can tailor your content based on their responses.

Combine this feature with a QTINTA audience participation question for a really engaging experience. You’ll have to watch the video to know what QTINTA means.

#5 Use the Zoom ‘beauty mode’ to soften your appearance

Zoom includes a “Touch up my appearance” filter in the “Preferences > Video” settings, which gives your skin a softer appearance. There’s a slider that lets you control how much it applies the effect. It can look weird if you crank it too much, but having just a little can really help – especially if you’re looking a big bedraggled.

Settings are maintained when you quit so you can expect to look the same way every time.

#6 Use Zoom ‘video filters’ to add a cinematic high-contrast appearance

We’re all familiar with Zoom backgrounds, but a more impressive feature in my mind are the video filters. You can access them via the “Stop Video” dropdown arrow. Yes, there are some silly ones which can be funny when in a meeting, but for presenting stick to the non-silly ones. They can help improve the quality of your on-camera look. I particularly like the first option “Boost” which kicks your contrast up a notch removing any bland washed out lighting, it also removed some warmer tones which I like as it reduces the redness I often have in my skin.

You can see that it increases the contrast but also cuts down on the redness in my face.

Unlike the “Touch up my appearance” feature, your video filter settings are not maintained between sessions, which is a frustrating extra step each time if you found a setting you like.

#7 Encourage attendees to use ‘side-by-side mode’ to view you and your slides

This can be a good setting if you want to make your talk feel more personal. It shows your camera video beside your slides, and viewers can resize the videos as they see fit.

It can be a good idea to point this out as not everyone will know.

E.g. “You should be viewing this presentation in side by side mode so you see me and the slides. If you want to make the slides bigger (or smaller) you can resize them by dragging the slider between my video and the slides.”

#8 Use Zoom ‘annotations’ to mark up your slides live, or a ‘whiteboard’ for a blank canvas

A really cool feature of Zoom is Annotations. This lets you write or draw on top of the screen you are sharing. Once the feature is activated , you can access it from the menu at the top when you are sharing your screen.

This is really helpful when you have a complex slide and you want to focus people’s attention on different areas of the screen as you talk. When presenting live on a stage you can gesture towards a particular area, but it’s not as easy in a virtual presentation which is why it’s handy.

There is also a Whiteboard feature that gives you, well, a whiteboard. This could be useful if you find that you need to dig into a point you’re making in a more detailed way or discover during your talk that you need a different way to explain it.

You might want to take a quick screenshot when you’re done if you happened to get some interesting ideas marked up.

Rock open a whiteboard and sketch a diagram. Having a tablet and pen would be very helpful for this, versus trying to draw with a mouse. It might be wise to use the non-verbal feedback feature to get folks to say “Yes” to a “Let me know if you’re ready to move on” question.

Note, this is a screen sharing feature, so in order to get to the whiteboard, you need to stop sharing your screen, then share once more but choose Whiteboard as the option. Then you’ll have to stop sharing and share your slides again. Make sure you’ve practiced this if you think you’ll be using it.

#9 Use ‘closed captions’ to increase the accessibility of your virtual presentation and video recording

Zoom has transcription features that let you add closed captions to your session. You can do it manually for free, but that means someone will have to type them live, which is a pretty specific skill to have, and requires someone to do it for you.

If you have a paid Zoom account (roughly $20/month) live transcriptions are included. An alternative is to integrate with a platform like Otter.ai, to add closed captions in real time. You can also use Otter for transcribing any other audio or video files you have which makes it a much better value.

There are several reasons why closed captions are a good thing to do.

• No headphones: if an attendee doesn’t have or forgot their headphones and they’re in an environment where they can’t have the volume on, closed captions are a life saver that could be the difference between them staying or leaving.
• Accessibility: Captions allow meetings to be accessible to all. For the deaf, hard of hearing, or non-native speakers, they are an absolute necessity to understand what’s going on.
• Attention and recall: closed captioning can increase the amount of your content that an attendee comprehends and remembers. This is because they are getting it using two senses, and you have to focus more intently when you are reading.

You can check out Otter here to set up live captions.

#10 Use Zoom ‘breakout rooms’ to split workshop participants into groups

Without question, one of the most popular Zoom features is Breakout Rooms. They are exactly as they sound, allowing you to break out attendees into separate rooms. This could be for hosting a multi-track event where there is a speaker in each breakout room, or more commonly it is to allow groups to work together away from the “Main Room” and then come back in to rejoin you as the speaker.

This is a wonderful feature if you are running workshops that require groups to work through some of your worksheets or tasks for example.

There’s a good demo of how to use Zoom breakout rooms here.

#11 Use a Zoom ‘waiting room’ to hold attendees before you let them in at the same time

Nobody shows up at the same time to a presentation, and you don’t always want to start until an acceptable threshold of attendees have arrived. Particularly if the beginning of your talk is fundamental to your big idea.

The waiting room is basically a holding area where attendees are listed as they show up. They get to see a simple welcome screen (annoyingly simple really – I’d much prefer to have the options to have a fully custom slide in there), and you can admit them one by one, or all at once, when you are ready to begin.

It also allows you to block people from entering, although for the most part there’s not much reason to do this when you are presenting to a large audience. Useful if someone becomes disruptive for any reason.

Caution: it’s very easy to forget about the waiting room and have people sitting around unable to get in after you’ve started. I recommend assigning this task to your co-host.

Cool Zoom Feature to Avoid – ‘Present with your PowerPoint or Keynote slides as a virtual background’.

This is an interesting feature that’s worth discussing both for why it’s cool and why it’s uncool.

What it does

Instead of a regular screen share, it takes your slide deck and sets it as the background much like any other Zoom background. As such it places a ‘mini you’ floating on top of the slides in cutout mode which is kinda fun. Kinda.

To access the feature (beta at time of writing) click the “Advanced” tab in the “Share Screen” popup, and select “Slides as Virtual Background”.

This is what it looks like from the attendee’s perspective. And yes, you appear twice on the screen. Once on top of your slides, and again beside them. Silly.

Note: you must download a local copy of your slide deck to your computer as it doesn’t connect to cloud-based slides.

If you have audio and video in your slides, checking the “Share Sound” option at the bottom-left of the share popup should make that transmit to the audience. However, it doesn’t. In fact I couldn’t get any video or audio to play at all.

There’s also a second “Split Video from Slides” option which kinda defeats the purpose. As you can see below, you are back with your regular background in a separate window, and you are only on the screen once.

With the split setting in place, it would be a fair to wonder why you’d use this feature as it looks just the same as the regular view.

There are however, a few key differences.

The major difference is that you don’t need to have your slides in fullscreen mode on your computer. In the screenshot below you’ll see that I’m looking at a Zoom window with my slides inside it. I can now move through my slides while having other windows open such as the chat and participant windows. This is actually pretty great as the audience doesn’t see your layout, they see what they would normally see.

A nice side effect of this setting is the audience won’t see the awkward moment at the start of your talk where your whole screen is visible until you start the slides.

Looking at the main window, you can clean up the view a bit by having attendee video off by un-checking “More > Allow Participants to Start Video” in the Participants panel, and then selecting “Hide non-video participants” from the “…” menu on one of the participant video boxes.

You can take it a step further if you select “Hide self view” from the … on your video thumbnail. This will give you a view of just your slides. As much as the layout annoys me (I’d rather pop the self view out to the side with the chat), it can be important to see yourself to make sure you’re not moving out of frame – particularly if you are speaking standing up.

However, at this point in the beta it’s just not usable enough to be a serious and professional solution because of a few technical failings:

• It’s buggy like most beta features are
• It doesn’t show any animations or slide transitions
• If you are recording the screen, the merge view while fun, is a little unprofessional looking
• Audio and video didn’t work at all for me, despite there being a setting to allow slide audio to work. I think this might be because the videos didn’t play.
• When you start the share it has to process the slides before it starts which causes a delay if you aren’t expecting it.

Overall, it’s a feature with some exciting elements, although to be perfectly honest, the good aspects are nothing to do with the feature itself, but are side effects. I’d prefer to see a new feature that allows you to avoid presenting in fullscreen to allow a much greater degree of presenter screen setup.

The chapter title says it all. Do these things and your virtual presentations will be better. If you don’t, your presentation won’t be better than the last one you did, missing an important opportunity grow your skills as a virtual presenter.

Seriously. Do these things.

#1 Test your slides from the ‘attendee perspective’ using another laptop or tablet

Your slides might look amazing on your retina laptop or 5K monitor, but not all screens are alike, and your super-detailed tiny-text “revolutionary new marketing method” process diagram might look more like a dot-matrix printout to someone with a lesser screen.

Viewing your slides on a smaller or alternative screen isn’t enough. You also need to view them on Zoom on that screen, because virtual presentation software tends to change things you wouldn’t expect.

The golden rule of presentation QA is to run through every slide on the platform you’re going to be delivering on (Zoom, GotoWebinar, etc.) watching out for the things below:

• Any virtual presentation platform will add small visual artifacts to the video stream—they’re imperfect degenerative medium where some quality will be lost in transmission. As a result, your slides will never be quite as sharp as directly viewing your slides.
• If you have audio in your slides, check that the audio levels are balanced and not too loud or quiet. Remember to also test it with headphones on as that’s a common listening scenario for your audience.
• If you have video in your slides it may not come across well when presenting virtually. There’s usually some lag or choppiness that makes it skip frames. This can make the audio look out of sync.
• If you have multiple slides with audio, set them at the exact same level so people don’t get deafened. A common problem in that scenario is that the attendees will turn down their audio if you blast them, and then the next time you have audio it’s too quiet to hear properly. Your presentation software will have a setting for the audio or video volume. The best way to make sure they are the same is to move your slides to be one after the other (you can reorder them afterwards), then step through them to gauge the balance.
• If you have complex animations or transitions, they may render more slowly or less smoothly when piped through Zoom and a wifi connection. If they don’t work the way you want them to, consider simplifying them (fewer animations) or removing them altogether – replacing them with static slides. You can still use a technique like the Progressive Reveal to create a pseudo animation effect.

To prevent an audio feedback loop when testing your audio and video slides, have your partner/friend/colleague be on the viewer/attendee side in another room.

Whatever your specific case is, there’s a good chance that on the viewer’s side it’s not as perfect. So double, triple, and quadruple check.

I guess you should also single check. Why does nobody say that?

“You should single check your work to make sure it’s awesome.”

The best way to QA is to record some video of it from the viewer’s perspective. Have your QA buddy record their screen (with audio). If you don’t have anyone to help you, just set up your extra laptop (hopefully you have one somewhere) in another room and record the screen from there. If you’re using a Mac, Quicktime is an easy way to get a recording. On a PC, you can use PowerPoint to do a screen recording (more on that later), or find some free screen recording software for a test.

If you do have a helper, you can also reverse roles where they present and you observe on their machine. This will give you the truest sense of what might need to be fixed. It’ll no doubt be quite hilarious to watch, unless they turn out to be better at it than you.

#2 Remove all hashtags from your slides

My typical advice regarding hashtags is to make sure you update them to use the current event’s hashtag if you’ve used this slide deck before. If you don’t it looks awful to the audience and makes them feel like you didn’t put in the effort to make a presentation just for them.

However, the main goal of this entire guide —primarily covered in chapters 10 and 11— is to ensure you create a professional-grade recording of your virtual presentation that you can repurpose over and over for multiple virtual events.

If you leave event hashtags in your slides they will be forever embedded in your recording, rendering it useless for re-use. And trust me, once you’ve created a high-resolution awesomely edited recording of your talk, you will feel amazing about it.

It may feel counterintuitive, but you should delete all the hashtags from your slides.

If the event mentions it and asks you why or asks you to include them, just politely let them know your rationale. I’ve found that many virtual events have interactive chat in the interface they use which tends to dilute the number of people hanging out on a Twitter hashtag anyway.

#3 Have a wired Internet connection

If attendees have a poor connection they can always leave and download the video and slides later on.

But the presenter is the one person who absolutely must have a great Internet connection, and the best way to do that is to have directly wired Ethernet.

A side benefit of this is that it will help you end the endless debate over who’s connection is causing the problem. I’m sure you’ve been in a meeting where someone suggests your Internet is slow, and you say yours is fine, and they say that theirs has been working brilliantly all week.

Just say “Yeah, but I have a hardwired Ethernet connection.” End of conversation.

If you don’t have a wired connection, work on getting one set up, and in the meantime tell your eager tech wannabe roommates NOT to reset the ******* wifi while you’re presenting.

#4 Have a backup audio input device

“Is this mic on? Can you hear me at the back?”

Sometimes your mic will stop working, and it’s one of the most uncomfortable panic-ridden things that can happen to a speaker (see When Things Go Wrong ). It could be a dead battery issue, or your headphone cable could be old and the internal wiring failed.

Whatever the cause, you need to have a way to deal with the problem.

If you are using a posh external mic that stops working, ditching it for the internal microphone of your laptop will likely degrade the audio quality significantly, but it’s better than nothing.

In a later chapter I do a deep dive comparison video about microphone options for virtual presenting .

Probably the simplest backup is another set of headphones. The classic Apple headphones are only $25 now. Make sure you get the ones with the 3.5mm jack, and not the lightning cable, (especially if you’re not an Apple person) as that’s only useful for your iPhone. And if you aren’t an Apple person, there are a million other options on Amazon.

However, be warned that these headphones are rife with audio problems such as noisy cables (you’ll need to sit still which sucks), and they should only be used on Zoom. When using them with any other audio recording software they have a horrific background hiss that destroys your audio, but Zoom’s noise removal feature (on by default) actually does a fantastic job of removing it, making them a viable last minute solution. Hopefully, you’ll never need to use them.

#5 Have a slide dedicated to encouraging non-verbal feedback

The non-verbal feedback feature of Zoom is a great way to make your talk more dynamic. But you don’t want to try and explain it in the middle of your talk as it’ll break the flow and screw up the fluidity of your recording.

Instead, consider which aspects of the feature you want to use, and have a slide at the start of your presentation (slide 2 for example) that focuses on this. You can quickly walk people through how it works, and tell them how you’ll be using it throughout.

#6 Have everyone muted by default

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. You don’t want attendees, whether it’s 5 or 500, to be chatting before or during your presentation. So this one is simple. Make sure you mute everyone. If you’re using your Personal Meeting ID you might have this already set up.

You can mute everyone in the Participants sidebar, or as a global default setting in the web portal administration settings “Settings > Schedule Meeting > Mute all participants when they join a meeting”.

#7 Wear confidence clothes

Just because you can present in your PJs it doesn’t mean you should present in your PJs. Treat it like an on-stage talk and get ready in your mojo outfit. You’ll gain confidence and look more professional.

Something I like to do when I’m on the road presenting, is lay out my clothes the night before. It helps me get in the right mindset and also saves time the next day when you might be stressing out.

#8 Close all of your other software to prevent your machine slowing down

Take a look at your computer right now and count A) how many different apps are running, and B) how many tabs you have open in your browser.

Here’s a screenshot of mine, for reference.

Tabs open in Chrome? 39. Apps open? 20

You need to be concerned about two things, the amount of memory and processing power being hogged by all the apps you have open, and the number of ways you might receive a notification during your talk.

For PCs running Windows 10, there’s a built-in function to silence notifications when presenting . But if you’re a Mac user the settings for this are horrendous (slightly better in Big Sur). Fortunately there’s a free app called Muzzle that silences all of your notifications as soon as you share your screen.

#9 Have two pre-made slides ready for Q&A at the end of your virtual presentation

It’s common for your host to ask questions that the audience has submitted in the chat window (or the Q&A window for Zoom Webinars) at the end of your session. The best way to utilize this opportunity—if you’re still in control of the screen—is to have two slides prepared.

The first slide should simply have Q&A written on it, really big.

The second slide should be a promo slide with a special offer you have.

I like to leave up the Q&A slide until the questions start, then flip it to the promo slide so it can sit there for the next 5-10 minutes. It’s a great way to have it visible for a long period of time without actually having to be salesy in your presentation.

It’s fairly common that an event organizer will ask you if you have something to promote, but if they don’t, ask them if it’s okay that you use a slide at the end like this.

#10 Build a background set to make your virtual presentations look professional

If you spend a lot of time on Zoom, instead of using a Zoom background, start thinking about how you can built a bit of a set where you do your presentations. Not only will it look more professional, but it will fill you with confidence and make you feel like you’re in presentation mode when you’re there.

I’m fortunate to have a space for my office/studio, and I’ve seen and felt the difference a well-designed environment makes when I show up to work. It took me months to get it right, so don’t think you have to suddenly have something perfect. Just chip away at it over time, turning on your webcam every day and giving a little thought as to how you can make the space more special. Small shelves with plants or books can work great, and Pinterest is definitely your friend for this type of thing.

Many folks won’t have a dedicated workspace to claim as your “stage”, but I’m pretty sure your significant other won’t complain if you make your home that little bit nicer.

Speaking of “stages”, I actually built a stage in my studio—almost burning down the house in the process —but that’s a story for another time. Like I said, it took months to get to this stage. I keep saying stage.

#11 Reboot your computer the night before your virtual presentation

Restarting your computer can help speed it up a bit, especially if you haven’t done it in ages. Any little performance advantage you can get is valuable for a live presentation. It will help clear out any processes that are stuck or hogging the CPU.

However, it’s best not to do this right before your talk, as you risk it doing some weird software updates that take hours to complete.

#12 Do a test Zoom meeting to check your camera angles and lighting

As Springsteen said in Dancing in the Dark—”I check my look in the mirror, I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face.”—you should always check how you look on camera before the presentation starts. Adjust the angle of the camera for your most flattering look and the best view of your background, which of course is a well-decorated wall, and not a zoom background of a beach or mountaintop.

Make sure to turn on the lights you’ll be using to light your lovely face, wick away any sweat using blotting wipes, and apply some simple makeup to remove shiny reflections from your head. More details on those techniques in the lighting section .

Here’s the smart part, record your test meeting and play it back to make sure there are no weird things in the background, it’s often easier to analyze a recording as opposed to your webcam view.

#13 Double-check your audio for background noise

At the same time as your camera check, watch your test recording and listen very carefully for any noise in the background. You’ll be surprised at how oblivious you can be to background noise when you’re busy and/or nervous.

Sounds to watch out for:

• Laundry sounds: Depending on where your washer/dryer are it may not be an issue, but the low hum can travel far. Start a Zoom recording, making sure to use which ever audio (mic) input you plan on using, go turn on your washer or dryer or dishwasher, then come back and replay the recording to see if it’s discernible. Crank the volume to make sure. There is NOTHING worse than doing a badass presentation then finding out the recording is ruined by a persistent hum in the background, or the sound of someone’s hoody zip clattering round and round in the dryer.
• Tube lights: If you have any tube lights where you are recording, or even in a nearby room, turn them off. They can be soooo noisy. Then put in the effort to replace them with silent LED tube bulbs when you have time. It does require some rewiring, but it’s not that hard—I did it recently and I made sure to choose bulbs with the same colour temperature as the lights I’ll be using to light me up in the video–more on that in the A/V chapter .
• Ceiling fans: Another subtle and repetitive sound. Turn ’em off unless the resulting heat will make you sweat to the point of scaring the audience.
• Heating: Not all heating is noisy, but many houses in North America use what’s called forced air. It’s noisy. A low hum, yes, but it’s an audio killer.
• Noisy clothes: Your clothes can cause bad scratching sounds—even if you use a shotgun microphone that’s not attached to your clothes—which is an audio killer. What happens is that any loose clothing rubs against you when you gesticulate with your arms. Tighter clothes like a t-shirt are the solution to this. I go into more depth including a comparison video in What to do When Noisy Clothes Ruin Your Audio .
• Noisy shoes: if you’re wearing any kind of heels, they will cause irritating sounds if you shuffle your feet (while presenting standing up, which you should do). The simplest solution is to take them off and present in your socks (or bare feet).
• Analog watches: I’m kidding.

And make sure everyone in the house knows not to bother you while you’re presenting. If you are in a room with a door, hang a sign on it with the time of your event, and say not to disturb you until you take the sign off the door.

Guess what? Not every thing you can do as a virtual presenter is something you should be doing—I’m talking about you, speaker who likes to take a bathroom break while mic’d up, two minutes before the session starts.

Similarly, not every feature of Zoom has a positive impact on the audience or speaker experience. In this short and not-so-sweet chapter I’ll give you some tips about things to avoid so your talks go more smoothly.

#1 Don’t use a free Zoom account for your presentation

If you’re running the show yourself this is an important one. The free Zoom plan allows up to 100 attendees which is great, and more than enough for a small event, however there is also a 40-minute time limit, which would be very embarrassing if you didn’t know that and all of a sudden everyone gets kicked out of your virtual event.

#2 Try to avoid saying “Can you hear me?”

This is a classic intro statement that nervous presenters ask, but it makes you sound unprofessional. Instead, make a subtle change to how you position it, like this:

“Thanks {host name}, let’s get started, and let us know in the chat window if you have any issues hearing my audio.”

#3 Don’t use your laptop’s microphone if your webcam is sitting on an external monitor

When you do this, the laptop will be off to one side and your audio will be really quiet and sound like you’re in a different room.

#4 Don’t use stock photos in your slides

Just as you shouldn’t use a stock photo as the header background on your website, you shouldn’t use them in your presentations. To illustrate my point, it’s way too common for software companies to think it’s cool to use an overhead shot of a laptop and a coffee cup. It’s actually hilarious how prevalent it is. I recommend entering the URL of any image you’re considering using into tineye.com which will tell you how many times it’s been used.

If you absolutely have to use one, try hard to find one that’s not so widely used. Unsplash.com is a good resource for free photography that’s typically got less of a stock feel to it.

But all in all, the best way to avoid using stock photos is to develop an original content mindset (in chapter 6) .

#5 Don’t use a Zoom background. You heard me.

Zoom backgrounds can be fun in meetings, but when you’re presenting it can look unprofessional and can be really distracting. It can also make some of your head/hair disappear and speaking for myself, I need all the hair I can get.

#6 Don’t record the call without permission

This is a big no-no on certain types of call. For a presentation you can make a statement that it’s being recorded, as this is always helpful information for attendees to know (no permission needed) but if it’s a meeting with a client, customer, or coworker, you should be explicit that you are recording and why: “If it’s okay with you I’d like to record the call so I don’t miss any of the details.” This is important when you are a guest in an interview too. Asking for permission will add a level of trust and respect in the eyes of who you are asking – and in the very rare occasion that they say no, be graceful and say okay no worries. Then follow up with,”I may be taking notes throughout so bare with me if I’m scribbling”.

Also be aware, that if you  are recording the session, everyone on the other side will see a blinking “recording” signal in the top-left corner, so there’s no creeping allowed.

To recap, remember these rules when it comes to recordings:

• Meetings: Ask for permission, and don’t record if your guest is uncomfortable with it.
• Presentations: Let people know that it’s being recorded and that you will be making it available after. Ideally after some post-production enhancements in chapter 11.

#7 Don’t be the host if you might leave early

This is a nightmare as the other participants are suddenly without a meeting and they might not know why. Then they have to re-coordinate to set up a new meeting, which is always a chore and often involves Slack or text messages or even worse, emails.

Intro Introduction to Virtual Presentations on Zoom

Chapter 1 18 Cool Zoom Features You Should Know About

Chapter 2 12 Things You Should Do in Your Zoom Presentation

Chapter 3 8 Things You Shouldn’t Do in Your Zoom Presentation

Chapter 4 Defining Your Presentation’s Purpose

Chapter 5 How to Define Your Talk’s Structure, Story, & Flow

Chapter 6 41 Slide Design Tips for Virtual Presentations

Chapter 7 6 Ways to Make Eye Contact With an Invisible Audience

Chapter 8 How to do Audience Participation in a Virtual Presentation

Chapter 9 How to Share Content during a Zoom Presentation

Chapter 10 How to Create a Stunning Video and Audio Recording

Chapter 11 Using Post-Production to Add Value to Your Zoom Recording

Chapter 12 How to Use Your Phone as a Beautiful Webcam

Chapter 13 What to Do When Things go Wrong in Your Presentation

Chapter 14 How to Ground Yourself and Get Ready to Present

Chapter 15 Advanced & Creative Zoom Presentation Techniques

Chapter 16 The Difference Between Zoom Meetings and Zoom Webinars

Chapter 17 23 Zoom Settings to Enable or Disable for a Smooth Presentation

Module 8: Developing and Delivering Business Presentations

Making a presentation for a meeting, learning outcomes.

• Create a presentation intended for a business meeting

With perspective on the technical tools, communications planning and information design, let’s take this learning for a test drive.

What’s considered an effective (that is, persuasive) presentation structure hasn’t changed fundamentally over the centuries. In his analysis of dramatic structure in the Poetics , Aristotle identified a play as having three parts: a beginning, middle and end. The story begins with a “complication” (problem), ends with an “unraveling” (resolution), and follows a logical sequence of events from beginning to end. Hollywood screenwriters use the same structure and dynamics. Screenwriter, producer and author Syd Field, whom CNN called “the guru of all screen writers,” translated this simple three-step structure into numerous books and workbooks, including the bestsellers Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting and The Screenwriter’s Workbook .

In a business context, a good presentation is an effective presentation. That is, a good presentation achieves its intended outcome. Clearly, in order to achieve a specific outcome or objective, you need to know what it is. So, prior to crafting the drama (in word or slide), you need to hone in on three things:

• The purpose of your presentation
• Your audience
• Your (one) message

For a review of these elements, refer to What’s my Presentation About .

Once you’re clear on those points, let’s proceed.

To build our presentation, we’ll use presentation expert Nancy Duarte’s interpretation of the classic 3-part story structure illustrated in Figure 1. For additional perspective on this structure, watch her TED Talk, “ The Secret Structure of Great Talks, ” or read her Harvard Business Review article, “ Structure Your Presentation Like a Story .”

Figure 1. Persuasive story structure (Duarte, “Structure Your Presentation Like a Story,” 2012).

The Beginning

The story starts with “What is”—the current state. Describe this baseline state in a way that is recognizable to the audience. This allows you and the audience to get in sync. And with this base level of agreement, your audience will be more receptive to your proposed change.

The second step is to introduce “What could be.” The gap between what is and what could be adds tension and drama to your story and largely determines the significance of your presentation. If there’s no conflict, no proposed change, what’s the point of the presentation?

Let’s say you’re an analyst on the new product development team of a retailer known for exclusive, trend-forward “house” branded products. Your company’s reputation and revenue depends on consistent introduction of new consumer-product goods. Marketing and distribution are key strengths, but new-product performance is off, revenue is below expectations and the company’s stock price recently fell 30 percent. Within your company, R&D (research & development) is strictly an insider’s game; any ideas or innovations that weren’t developed in-house are blocked. The problem is, you can’t innovate fast enough—or with enough market demand accuracy—to meet financial and stock market expectations. You and the other analysts on your team have been tracking innovation trends and successes and you think the answer is opening the R&D works to outside ideas and innovations. Here’s how you might lay out your presentation:

• What Is: We missed our quarterly earnings numbers, largely due to a failure to meet our innovation success targets over the last six months.
• What Could Be: Initial data suggests we could get back on track by modifying our R&D model to incorporate external innovations.

The bulk of your the presentation is developing the contrast between what is and what could be in order to set up your proposed resolution of the conflict or challenge. The objective is also to establish the validity of your arguments, so your proposed call to action is perceived as a logical, ideally inevitable, conclusion of the conflict.

• What Is: We currently bear the full cost and risk of developing new products and our innovation success rate—the percentage of new products that meet financial objectives—is running 25 percent below target.
• What Could Be: Sourcing promising innovations from outside the company could reduce R&D costs and risk while also increasing our innovation success rate.
• What Is: Our R&D process is taking so long that we’re missing trends and losing our market-leading brand reputation.
• What Could Be: We could license or buy promising innovations for a fraction of the cost it would take to develop them from scratch and leverage our marketing and distribution strengths to claim shelf and market share.
• What Is: Our below-plan performance and new product pipeline is costing us political capital with executive management, and we’re at risk of losing budget and/or layoffs.
• What Could Be: Adopting an open innovation culture would allow us to create partnerships that leverage our strengths and drive revenue, regaining a position of value within the company.

To craft a powerful close, heed Duarte’s advice and avoid a list of bullet point to-dos. Your objective here is to achieve resolution of the conflict introduced at the beginning, to issue a call to action that inspires your audience to support your vision of what could be, a state Duarte refers to as the “new bliss.”

Call to Action

To recover our position of a source of revenue and brand value, we need to start working to build a culture and networks that support open innovation and accelerate the development of new products, regardless of the source of the idea.

Our ability to drive value secures our position and reputations in the company, and in the marketplace, and pays off in employee stock value and profit sharing.

The new bliss articulates the proposed—and a desired future state—incorporating the WIIFM, what’s in it for me, that motivates your audience to buy into and work to support the required change.

Practice Question

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15 Best Tips for Presenting at a Conference

Published on 18 Nov 2021

Presenting at a conference is an important part of a researcher’s life: it allows you to share all the work you’ve been doing for months or years.

At the same time, it also exposes some intimate aspects of yourself to the outside world, like your thought process, your level of knowledge on a topic, or your ability to structure ideas.

I personally found myself frightened about presenting on multiple occasions. I remember my first seminar at the beginning of my master's degree in biochemistry. Coming from a bachelor in ecology, I felt like an imposter in the new department and was scared others would judge my level of knowledge or the quality of my presentation. Of course, these were only negative projections I was making in my mind, but they reflect the stressful vibe one can feel when preparing to give a talk.

On the positive side, a successful presentation leads to a better understanding of your work by the audience. This generates insightful discussions that can provide ideas about what the next steps of your research should be or clues to solve roadblocks.

It also leaves a good impression on the work done at your lab which can attract new collaborators. Also, getting your work noticed, especially at large conferences, can lead to your publications being more cited. If you’re a student, you can be rewarded with a presentation prize that will boost your curriculum when applying for scholarships.

Above all, learning to communicate, especially to the general public, is a valued skill.

So how can you nail your next presentation? There are no magic pills, but in this article, we’ll share some important tips to help you deliver the best presentation at your next event.

1- Do not start by working on your slides

It is very easy to get lost in your slides if you do not plan first. That is why you need to outline your key ideas and the order in which you want to present them BEFORE jumping into building slides in PowerPoint (or another platform).

You can start with bullet points, a flowchart, or something similar. The crucial part here is to make sure you are laying out the information and not just throwing it on the slides as they come to your mind. It is easy to get lost if you just keep adding slide after slide without any concern for length and/or connections between the information.

You can use sticky notes, paper planners, online flowchart generators, or other tools to help you in the layout phase.

Then, equally important to the key ideas is how you tie all of that content together. You should plan a logical transition and a progression between each idea. This will help you define a common thread and establish the flow of your presentation. Ultimately, it will help the audience capture the message you’re sharing.

In summary, knowing what you want to talk about is key. So before working on your slide deck and your handouts, develop this layout that highlights and connects the information you want to share.

2- Have a duration in mind

You’ll have a limited amount of time to get your message across, so you have to plan your presentation around that time frame. If you have 15 minutes to present your work, plan a presentation that lasts slightly less than that time limit.

Another tip for presentations is to use a timer while presenting to ensure you don’t go overtime.

A lot of people do not plan their time wisely and end up skipping slides in their presentation or going overtime. And guess what? Your audience knows when you skip content because you ran out of time. It comes off as unprofessional and may affect the way people see your work. So take your time preparing your presentation around your time constraints.

If your initial mockup is longer than what it should be, start by analyzing what information could be deleted or ways to get the information across using fewer words. 

It’s often just a matter of focusing on the details that matter the most. Don’t explain all the details of the methodology or the results if it doesn’t add to the story. Keep that for smaller group discussions or during the Q&A period. 

3- Use visuals to your advantage

Visuals are a must in any presentation. Whether it is an image, a chart, a graphic, or a video, visuals help with interpretation and can be an effective way to get your message across or grab the audience's attention.

Just because you’re presenting at an academic conference, it doesn’t mean you can’t use images, videos, or even gifs to help get the message across.

Most people deal better with visuals than words , especially when the information is heavy with data and numbers. But even with visuals, remember to keep it simple. The whole purpose of using visual aids is to help your audience understand the message and not to confuse them with too much information. 

If you’re presenting figures or graphs, remember to use the pointer to highlight the key points while you explain your slide. This is something that is easy to forget when the stress level is high, but it can be a good way to stay grounded and focused on the presentation.

4- Know your audience

In any academic conference, knowing your audience puts you one step closer to delivering an effective presentation. Do your research when starting to prepare your presentation.

Skimming the proceedings of past editions of a conference can reveal past participant lists and their profile. Different conferences have different proportions of undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, or principal investigators. Knowing the proportions of each category can indicate the level of knowledge on certain topics and if you need to spend time explaining certain areas so they understand the rest of the presentation or not.

If you find the abstracts, the Powerpoints, or the recordings of talks from previous editions, it can also help you adjust the depth in which you can go when explaining certain concepts.

Do not fall under the trap of assuming your audience knows nothing about your research subject. If they are at your research conference, it is most likely that they possess knowledge of (and interest in) what you are talking about. So, skip the basics that everyone knows if you feel you can.

Use jargon that is easily understood by the community at large and make sure you define less common abbreviations.

Knowing your audience is not always an easy task. If you’re not sure if your audience is familiar with a specific topic, don't be afraid to ask them! It will make everyone feel more involved and you will get their attention for the rest of the presentation. The bottom line, adapt your message to the audience.

5- Practice, practice, and practice again

No one should know your presentation better than you. When preparing for a particular conference, rehearse your talking points out loud and make sure you feel 100% comfortable with the information laid out on your slides. 

In addition, make sure the key ideas and the logical transition between them are crystal clear. One of the worst things that can happen to presenters is getting lost in their own presentation. 

You should practice your speech out loud to become familiar with the words as this will help your tone and confidence. When you sound confident, people are keener to listen to what you are saying.

One additional common but useful tip is to record yourself while practicing. It will help you know where you're lacking and what needs to be improved. 

 For example, some people tend to talk really fast or jump on sentences while others tend to ignore full stops. No matter what the issues are, recording yourself is a great tactic to find and address them.

6- Present it to a friend or colleague

Outside of practicing it out loud on your own, practice it in front of your colleagues. It will give you an experience that will resemble the real presentation the most.

While you present, notice their facial expressions. They can reveal parts of your presentation that are unclear. Tell them not to interrupt you during the presentation, but tell them to note down their suggestions or questions for the end. Make sure to use a timer to measure how you’re doing on time.

Some people like to present to someone completely detached from the topic. The idea is that if people who are not completely familiar with the subject can follow your presentation, people in the field should be able to easily follow it as well. 

No matter which option you choose, this exercise will help if you have difficulties speaking in public. Do not be afraid of doing these multiple times before your presentation and always ask for honest feedback. The more you practice, the more confident and more fluent you will be.

During my Ph.D., we often presented to our lab members and went through a Q&A section. Not only was it a good opportunity to practice the presenting skills, but it was also a moment to discuss specific aspects and prepare for potential questions. I remember in some instances, the feedback led to reshuffling the ideas completely in a way that made more sense.

7- Appearances matter

Even though people are coming to your presentation because they are interested in your research, appearances matter. The way you speak, how you interact with your audience, and even what you wear, make an impact. Make sure you wear comfortable clothes. 

 If you’re presenting at an online event, make sure the lighting comes from in front of you and not from behind or it will make your face appear darker. Not seeing a presenter clearly can distract the audience and decrease attention.

Also make sure there isn’t anything distracting in the background, like television or someone walking. The best background is usually solid-colored walls.

8- Sleep and eat well before the event

Get a good night of sleep the night before the event. You will feel well-rested and ready to tackle the presentation. It can be tempting to practice your slides and go over your presentation late at night, but it is sometimes better to get a good night's sleep.

In addition, make sure to eat well. You don’t want to feel dizzy or be occupied thinking about food when you should be thinking about the presentation.

Lastly, have a bottle of water close to you while you’re presenting. That will allow you to take pauses when needed and give your audience time to absorb the information after you jump into the next slide or argument.

9- Have a backup

If you have your presentation stored on a hard drive, make sure to have an extra copy on the cloud and vice-versa. Hard drives can break and technical difficulties can occur with cloud storage, so always have a backup just in case. 

Depending on the guidelines of the event, you can also send a copy of your presentation to the organizer and/or colleague. Send yourself a copy of the presentation by email as well.

A lot of people also have a paper copy of their presentation. That’s the last case alternative but also nice to have. If you are in a poster presentation, this may be harder to achieve.

If you have videos in your presentation, check out if the platform and/or venue can display that, especially the audio (if it’s important). Not all software or places have the necessary (or compatible) technology to display your presentation as they should.

10- Use body language

Body language has an essential role in presentations, especially online ones. Make sure you use body language the right way, otherwise it can be distracting for your audience. That includes fidgeting, repeatedly fixing your hair or clothes, among other things.

In academic conferences, the presentations are usually heavy on the information and data side, so it is important that presenters take advantage of tone of voice, gestures, and other body language resources to get their point across.

It is best to keep eye contact with people in the audience. This way, they will feel you are talking TO them and not AT them. But make sure to alternate and not stare at one single person throughout the whole presentation. 

Be aware of your posture and if you have any notes, make sure to either hold them or have them at eyesight. It is common to have notecards during a conference talk, but it is important to know your presentation and not depend on the notes.

11- Encourage your audience to interact with you

A big part of your presentation is for you to talk about your research. People are there to listen to you and absorb information, but they are also there to make the most out of the experience, and that includes engaging and asking questions.

Prepare yourself to answer questions from the audience. It is impossible to cover everything in a short presentation, so try to cover as much as possible and if there are questions you think will arise from the audience, prepare to answer them.

Depending on the type of presentation and what’s expected, you can keep questions for the end or allow questions during the presentation.

If there is a question that you do not have the answer to, it’s ok to say it. It’s better to offer to look more into it and get back to them rather than trying to improvise an answer. Provide your contact information in the final slide or at the end of your presentation. Some participants can reach out to you if they have any questions, suggestions, or opportunities that could be beneficial to you.

If you are giving an online presentation, invite participants to ask a question through the conference platform or website. For example, Fourwaves has a built-in Q&A section on each presentation page where presenters and participants can interact.

12- Structure your presentation and let your audience know

Let your audience know what you will be covering in your presentation. Have a clear outline of the topics and make sure to have this journey clear so the audience understands where you are taking them.

You can start the presentation by highlighting the key messages, but don’t forget to have a summary at the end (your conclusion), where you reiterate the main points of your presentation.

13- Pay attention to design

Adhere to the following basic design principles when building your slides. Avoid distracting colors and mixing more than 2 colors in each slide. If you use a light background, you should use a dark font and vice-versa. Make sure the font size is also big enough and that you are not stuffing too much information into a slide.

A good rule of thumb for your slides is to have about 5 bullet points on each one and give enough time for people to read through them if they need to. Most of the information should be coming out of your mouth and not described in the slides. The slides are just a summary (the bullet points) of what you will cover.

If you are adding visuals, make sure they are big enough so people can see them and they are not covering any information.

14- Take other presentations as an example

You have probably been part of dozens and dozens of presentations in a lifetime. Is there something you liked a lot in those or something you hated? If yes, write it down. If it is positive, strive to replicate that in your presentation. If it is negative, discard it.

If you are taking part in an annual event, you may be able to access presentations from the years before and draw conclusions from there. You can also look for similar poster presentations or templates and get inspiration from those.

Keep in mind that every person has a presentation style. Learn the basic guidelines and find what works best for you.

15- Rely on storytelling

Storytelling is relying on stories (narrative) to talk about something (e.g. personal anecdotes, metaphors, comparisons, etc.). People rely on stories for mnemonic purposes and most of the time, it is easier to remember a story or an analogy than it is to remember a specific situation.

No matter what the topic is, analogies make it easier for people to understand facts. Whenever possible, try to use a metaphor or a comparison

Bonus tip - Remember to stop and breathe during your presentation

It’s normal to feel stressed even if you’re super well prepared and that you know your topic inside out.

Make sure to take the time to pause in between slides and to take a good slow deep breath. It will help you stay focused throughout the presentation.

Practice this during your rehearsals. Not talking for 3-4 seconds can seem long for you, but your audience will appreciate it and it will help you feel calmer.

At the core, preparing for a conference presentation is no different than preparing for any type of public speaking assignment. You need to understand the topic very well, research and practice what you are going to say, and know your audience, among other things.  

Most of all, remember: no one is born with great presentation skills, so give yourself room to improve.

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• Project management |
• Meeting agenda examples: How to plan, w ...

Meeting agenda examples: How to plan, write, and implement

Your agenda tells your team what to expect during a meeting and how they can prepare for it. Ideally, you’ll use your agenda to connect your team with the meeting’s purpose, assign tasks or items to team members, and designate a realistic amount of time to each agenda item. A great meeting agenda maximizes the meeting’s effectiveness and keeps your team on track.

An effective agenda communicates the purpose of your meeting, gives your team the chance to prepare their agenda items, and keeps everyone on track.

Whether you’re preparing for your next board meeting, staff meeting, or business meeting, we’ll help you write an agenda that will maximize your meeting’s potential.

What is a meeting agenda?

A meeting agenda serves as a structured roadmap for your meeting, detailing the topics and activities planned. Its primary role is to provide meeting participants with a clear framework, outlining the sequence of events, the leader for each agenda item, and the time allocated for each task. By having this agenda as a guide both before and throughout the meeting, it helps to facilitate an efficient and productive flow of discussion.

How to write a meeting agenda

Crafting a meeting agenda is a key step in ensuring a focused and productive meeting. Here's how to do it effectively.

1. Clarify meeting objectives

The first step in writing a meeting agenda is to clearly define any goals. In clarifying the goal, be as specific as possible. This specificity helps guide the discussion and ensure that the meeting remains focused. It also helps stakeholders prepare for the meeting.

For example, if the goal is to finalize the budget for the next quarter or discuss new business, participants would come prepared with relevant data and insights.

A well-defined goal also helps set the meeting's tone and align everyone's expectations. This clarity leads to a more structured discussion and a more productive meeting overall.

2. Invite participant input

Inviting input from participants before finalizing the agenda is a critical step in creating a comprehensive and inclusive meeting plan. This involves reaching out to potential attendees and asking if there's anything specific they would like to discuss or add to the meeting agenda.

For example, if you're planning a meeting for a project team, you could send an email asking each member to suggest topics they feel are important to address. This could reveal issues or ideas you hadn't considered, ensuring a more well-rounded agenda.

Incorporating participant input not only makes the agenda more comprehensive but also increases engagement. When team members see their suggestions included, they feel valued and are more likely to participate actively in the meeting. It also ensures that the meeting addresses the concerns of all attendees.

Gathering input can be done through various channels, like email, shared docs, or team collaboration tools. The key is to make it easy for meeting participants to contribute and to ensure their suggestions are considered and, where appropriate, included in the final agenda.

3. Outline key questions for discussion

Making a list of important things to talk about is important for keeping the meeting on track and focused. Start by identifying the main meeting topics that need to be addressed and framing them as questions.

For instance, if the meeting is to discuss the progress of an ongoing project, key questions might include:

What are the current roadblocks in the project?

How are we tracking against the project timeline

What resources are needed to maintain the pace of work?

These questions serve as talking points and a guide for the discussion, ensuring that all relevant topics are covered. They also help in structuring the conversation, making it easier for participants to prepare and engage effectively.

4. Define each task’s purpose

Each task or topic on the agenda should have a clearly defined purpose. This transparency helps participants understand the importance of each discussion point and how it relates to the overall goal of the meeting.

For example, if one of the agenda items is to review recent client feedback and performance metrics, the purpose might be to identify areas for improvement in customer service. By stating this purpose, participants can focus their thoughts on this specific objective, leading to a more targeted and fruitful discussion.

Defining the purpose of each task also helps prevent the meeting from going off track. When participants understand why a topic is being discussed, they are less likely to veer off-topic, making the meeting more efficient.

5. Allocate time for agenda items

Effective meeting management requires allotting time for each item on the agenda. This includes determining the amount of time needed for each meeting topic or task and scheduling the meeting appropriately.

For instance, if you have five items on your agenda, you might allocate 10 minutes for a brief update, 20 minutes for brainstorming, and 15 minutes for discussing action items. This time allocation should be based on the complexity and importance of each topic.

Effective time management requires being realistic with your time estimates and factoring in extra time for unforeseen conversations or inquiries. This approach helps in keeping the meeting within the scheduled time frame, respecting everyone's time, and maintaining focus.

6. Assign topic facilitators

Assigning facilitators for each topic on the agenda can greatly enhance the effectiveness of the meeting. A facilitator’s role is to guide the discussion, make certain that the conversation stays on track, and that all voices are heard.

For example, if one of the agenda items is to discuss sales strategies, you might assign this topic to a senior salesperson. Their expertise and familiarity with the subject can help steer the conversation productively.

Facilitators should be chosen based on their knowledge of the topic and their ability to manage group discussions. They should also be briefed on their role and the expectations for the discussion.

7. Write the meeting agenda

Finally, compile all the elements into a structured and comprehensive agenda. The agenda should include the meeting’s goal, a list of topics to be discussed with their purposes, time allocations, and assigned facilitators. This structure provides a clear roadmap for the meeting, ensuring that all important points are covered.

Share the agenda with all participants well in advance of the meeting. This allows them to prepare and ensures that everyone is on the same page. A well-written agenda is a key tool in running an effective and productive meeting.

Tips to create an effective meeting agenda

Let’s start with some of our favorite tips on creating great meeting agendas so you can make the most of yours:

Create and share your meeting agenda as early as possible. At the very latest, you should share your meeting agenda an hour before the meeting time. This allows everyone to prepare for what’s going to happen. Your team can also relay questions or additional agenda items to you for a potential adjustment before the meeting. Besides, when your team members have a chance to properly prepare themselves, they’ll have a much easier time focusing during the meeting.

Link to any relevant pre-reading materials in advance. This can be the presentation deck, additional context, or a previous decision. Everyone arriving at the meeting will be on the same page and ready to move the discussion forward rather than asking a ton of questions that take up relevant time.

Assign facilitators for each agenda item. Remember that feeling of being called on in school when you didn’t know the answer? It’s a pretty terrible feeling that we’re sure you don’t want to evoke in your teammates. By assigning a facilitator for each agenda item before the meeting, you allow them to prepare for a quick rundown of the topic, questions, and feedback.

Define and prioritize your agenda items. Differentiate between the three categories of agenda items: informational, discussion topics, and action items. Clarifying the purpose of each agenda item helps your team member understand what’s most important and what to focus on. You’ll also want to prioritize which items are most important and absolutely have to be discussed during the meeting and which ones can be addressed asynchronously, should the clock run out.

Use your meeting agenda during the meeting to track notes and action items. That way, all of the meeting information is in one place. If anyone has questions about decisions or action items from the meeting, they have an easy place to find it. Bonus: Do this in Asana so you can assign out action items and next steps to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. Asana also integrates with Zoom and pulls in your Zoom recording or meeting transcript directly into the meeting agenda task.

Create flow by categorizing your agenda items. To maximize productivity, you’ll want to create a meeting agenda that flows well. Batch similar items together and ensure they can build off of one another. For example, list any informational items before the discussion items so your team has all of the information going into the discussion.

Allocate enough time for each item on your agenda. Nobody will complain about a meeting that runs short—keeping everyone longer than anticipated isn’t as much fun. Plan sufficient time for each agenda item by calculating an estimated time and adding a couple of minutes as a buffer. This will help with keeping your team on track and moving on from a topic when the time runs out.

By sticking to these best practices, you can ensure that your meeting agenda is a reliable tool and does the job—before, during, and after your meeting.

Why are meeting agendas important?

Whether you work from home and take virtual calls or sit in the office and meet in person, meetings can be incredibly draining. Beginning with some small talk may be nice to get to know each other better or catch up on what everyone did this past weekend but it certainly isn’t goal-oriented or productive. A meeting agenda can help your team maximize the potential of each meeting you hold.

Our research shows that unnecessary meetings accounted for 157 hours of “work” in 2020, compared to 103 in 2019. Considering a 40-hour work week, that’s almost four weeks of wasted time. This is where your meeting agenda comes in. If you’re doing it right, writing your meeting agenda is the first and best indicator of whether or not your meeting is actually necessary. If you find that everything on your meeting agenda can be discussed asynchronously , you can cancel the meeting and share your message in a time-saving email.

That isn’t to say all meetings should be replaced by emails. If you’re sure that the meeting is justified and necessary in order to drive your team’s progress, have that meeting. However, always make sure that you create an agenda before getting together so your team members know what you’ll be discussing and why the meeting matters.

Here are a few more great reasons to have meeting agendas:

Your agenda allows everyone to prepare for the meeting. Ideally, every item on your agenda will have a dedicated topic facilitator. When everyone going into the meeting knows what their responsibilities are in advance, they have time to prepare and will be more efficient during the meeting.

It shows you’re considerate of your team’s time. When your team receives a well-thought-out meeting agenda, they’ll immediately see that the meeting is actually necessary. Besides, it’s also a roadmap that will keep you on track during the meeting and ensure no time is wasted.

An agenda sets clear expectations of what will and won’t be discussed. Think of a meeting agenda as a way of setting boundaries and ensuring that only topics on the agenda will be talked about. If anything comes up during the meeting that needs to be discussed, write it down in your minutes and return to it later. Either at the end of your meeting—if you got through it faster than expected—asynchronously, or in the next meeting.

It keeps your team on track. Your meeting agenda will prevent your team from drifting off—whether that’s discussing non-agenda topics (like the barbecue at Kat’s place last night) or taking too much time for an item that had specific time allocated.

Your agenda will provide purpose, structure, and opportunities to collaborate. With a clear plan for everyone to follow, your team will go into the meeting knowing the purpose and goal of the meeting. Your meeting agenda also allows your team to direct their attention toward opportunities to collaborate, whether that’s during a brainstorming session , a town hall, or your daily standup.

Track next steps and action items so nothing falls through the cracks. Keep your agenda open during the meeting to capture any next steps or action items . By adding them directly into the agenda, these items won’t be forgotten when the meeting ends.

Meetings are great opportunities for your team to bond but the time spent on small talk can be worked into the first few minutes of the agenda rather than surfacing every now and then during the meeting, disrupting the flow and productivity or your team’s discussion.

Meeting agenda examples

We’ve discussed what makes a good meeting agenda and what you should avoid doing but, as always, it’s easiest to learn from a real life example. Let’s take a look at a project kickoff meeting agenda created in Asana:

As you can see, each item has a timebox and a teammate assigned to ensure everyone knows when it’s their turn and how long they have to lead their discussion or give their presentation. The agenda also has relevant files attached and is shared with all team members for visibility and better collaboration.

Meetings are a staple in the professional world, each with its own unique focus and dynamics. Understanding how to tailor your meeting agenda to the type of meeting you're conducting is key to ensuring effective communication and teamwork. Here are some common types of meetings and examples of how to structure their agendas.

Team meeting agenda

Team meetings serve as a platform for team building, decision making, and brainstorming. They can vary in frequency and duration but are essential for ensuring alignment and forward momentum. Effective team meeting agendas should include recurring items for regular meetings and space for new, ad-hoc topics. It’s also vital to track next steps and responsibilities assigned during the meeting. An example of a 45-minute team meeting agenda might cover metrics, a round-table plan, identification of blockers, and recognition of team members' contributions​​.

Daily Scrum meeting agenda

Daily scrum meetings, or stand-ups , are brief, focused gatherings aimed at keeping the team aligned during a sprint. These meetings typically cover blockers, a recap of the previous day’s work, goals for the current day, and progress towards sprint goals. The agility of these meetings helps in maintaining momentum and addressing issues promptly.

Project kickoff meeting agenda

Project kickoff meetings bring together cross-functional teams to start a new project. These meetings set the tone for the project and align everyone on objectives and expectations. The agenda should cover the project brief, roles and responsibilities, meeting cadence, actionable next steps, and a Q&A session to clarify doubts and ensure everyone is on the same page​​.

Retrospective meeting agenda

A retrospective meeting is a type of recurring meeting focused on reflecting on a past period of work, usually at the end of a project cycle or sprint. Its main purpose is to share information among team members about what worked well and what didn't. During the meeting, the entire team discusses various meeting topics, including successes, challenges, and blockers that impacted their work. This process helps in identifying areas for improvement and developing strategies to address any issues. Retrospective meetings are vital for continuous team development and ensuring better outcomes in future work cycles.

One-on-one meeting agenda

One-on-one meetings , whether they are between a manager and a direct report, peer-to-peer, or skip-level, are crucial for discussing work projects, roadblocks, and career development. They are foundational for building trust.

A good agenda for these meetings should balance topics like motivation, communication, growth, and work-related discussions. Avoid status updates; those are better suited for stand-up meetings. Sample questions for a weekly one-on-one might include assessing highlights and lowlights of the week, discussing any blockers, and inquiring about work-life balance​​.

Remote one-on-one meeting agenda

Remote one-on-one meetings require a slightly different approach, with a focus on rapport-building and clear communication. Since physical presence is lacking, these meetings benefit from a shared online agenda accessible to all participants. Key points could include checking in on general well-being, discussing current work assignments, and addressing any immediate concerns or assistance needed​​.

Skip-level meeting agenda

Skip-level meetings, involving senior managers and employees not in their direct report chain, offer a chance to connect across organizational levels. These meetings are ideal for discussing broader career development and providing feedback to senior leadership. Agenda items might cover clarity on company strategies and goals, personal professional objectives, and suggestions for organizational improvements​​.

Leadership team meeting agenda

Leadership team meetings are vital for strategic decision-making and issue resolution at the highest levels of an organization. An effective agenda for such meetings might include personal updates, reviewing key metrics, sharing wins and insights, discussing important messages, addressing pressing issues, and allocating time for an open discussion or "hot seat" session where specific topics are addressed in-depth​​.

Each type of meeting, be it an all-hands gathering, one-on-one discussion, performance review, or team brainstorming session, requires a thoughtfully crafted agenda to avoid unproductive meetings and keep discussions on track.

By using these meeting agenda examples, you can ensure that each meeting, regardless of its format, contributes meaningfully to the organization's goals and enhances teamwork and collaboration.

Running an effective meeting

It’s one thing to have an amazingly organized and detailed agenda that your team can reference before the meeting—using it as a tool during the meeting is a whole other ballpark. These tips will help you make your meeting agenda as useful during the meeting as it is as a preparation tool

Stick to your agenda. The best agenda becomes useless if you don’t stick to it during the meeting. Try not to bounce back and forth between agenda items but rather stick to the priorities you established earlier.

Stick to your timeboxes. It absolutely helps release some tension and lighten the mood if you have a bit of small talk or a quick check-in at the beginning of your meeting. That’s why you should allocate three to five minutes to this—and stick to the timeframe. Pictures of Kabir’s son’s adorable Halloween costume can be shared elsewhere so you have enough time to reach your meeting’s goals now.

Designate a note taker. At the beginning of the meeting, designate a note taker who will write down any questions, feedback, tasks, and ideas that come up during the meeting. You can rotate this position so everyone on your team gets to contribute at some point. Ideally, these notes are taken in the same place as the meeting agenda—this will make it a lot easier for team members to follow the notes and link them to agenda items. Notes can also be directly entered into Asana for real-time updating and tracking

Follow up after the meeting. Typically, the note taker will be responsible for following up with the meeting notes afterward. The notes should include any decisions that were made during the meeting, tasks that need to be completed, and questions that remained unanswered. If possible, assign teammates and add due dates to action items to keep accountability high. To ensure that these action items are tracked and completed, they should be promptly added to our Asana project management tool.

Make the most out of every meeting

With Asana, you can keep your meeting agenda, meeting minutes, and meeting action items in one place. Effortlessly share the agenda with your team and assign agenda items in real time so nothing falls through the cracks.

Streamlining your meetings with one central tool will reduce the amount of work about work your team faces, connect everyone to the purpose of the meeting, and allow for productive meetings everyone enjoys.

Related resources

How Asana uses Asana to streamline project intake processes

How Asana uses work management for smoother creative production

Project closure: 8 steps to finish projects confidently

How to use benchmarking to set your standards for success

13 Tips on How To Nail a Presentation To the Board of Directors

Published: January 13, 2021

In college, I always made it a point to listen intently to presentations. I knew how stressful and nerve-racking it was to present in a room of peers and authority figures.

I would nod feverishly to let presenters know I was invested in their presentation. And they knew it too. They often zeroed in on me as I became their focus point and silent motivator. The fixation felt awkward at times, but that felt like one of my small contributions to society. That, and an endless supply of cat videos.

Back then, the stakes were relatively low. But when you’re tasked with putting together a presentation to a board of directors, the pressure’s on.

But with a few tricks in your arsenal, you won’t need a sympathetic audience member to gauge how well you’re doing.

Let’s walk through some tips to prepare for your presentation and review some things to avoid.

How To Make a Presentation To the Board

• Know your audience.
• Plan ahead.
• Structure your presentation.
• Keep it concise.
• Set up early.
• Incorporate visuals into your presentation.
• Focus on results.
• Send materials beforehand.
• Build confidence with your power outfit.
• Rehearse your script.
• Don't fall into the PowerPoint Trap.
• Read the room.
• Include time for questions.

1. Know your audience.

Knowing your listeners is as important as the content of your presentation. When you understand their priorities, you can put together a presentation that speaks directly to them.

If you don't know the board well, do some research and get answers to these questions:

What does the board care about?

This will help you see from what lens they look at things. For instance, a board keen on community impact may not be drawn to a presentation focused on return on investment (ROI).

There are a few ways to find this out. You can start by looking into each board member’s professional background. If most members have a finance background, for instance, you’ll want to make sure you cover any financials as it relates to your presentation. This could be cost, expected ROI, or operating margins.

You can also get some insight into what the board cares about by looking back at your interactions with its members. Think about the conversations you’ve had: What comes up most often? Is it company culture, profit, philanthropy, innovation, or something else?

What are their main concerns?

A board of directors is responsible for making decisions that will ensure the growth and sustainability of a company. So naturally, they will be looking out for anything that may impede that process.

Common concerns a board may have are:

• Costs: How much time and money will it require?
• Timeline: How long will this project take and is that timeline feasible?
• Risks: How risky is your proposal and what is the risk-to-return ratio?

You may find that each board member has a different focus, which means your presentation should be well-rounded to tackle these issues.

Once you know this answer, you can subtly handle each concern throughout your presentation. Getting those answers will help you create a presentation that not only interests your audience but also aligns with their goals. This, in turn, will bring you much closer to accomplishing the plans laid out in your presentation.

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2. Plan ahead.

The next step in delivering a great presentation is making a plan. This means figuring out the focus of your presentation, what you’ll cover, and what you’ll leave out.

A presentation should follow the structure of any good movie, with a beginning, middle, and an end. Here’s an example outline for a presentation where the head of the marketing team is proposing course offerings as a new lead generation channel.

The middle is the meat and potatoes of your presentation. You'll likely spend time providing data, contextualizing it, and explaining your approach.

Your ending should bring together your key points and leave your audience with actionable steps. Because what good is providing the information if you have no plan for what to do moving forward?

3. Structure your presentation based on the board’s process.

Not every board of directors operates in the same way. Sure, there are standard guidelines for every meeting. However, the approach may vary for presentations.

Some may operate more like a town hall, pausing periodically to discuss the points as they come up. In this case, leave room after each section of your presentation to discuss what was covered.

Others may follow the more standard approach: presentation followed by a discussion. Studies show that humans remember best the beginning and end of what they read, hear, and see. What’s in the middle tends to get lost. With that in mind, consider sharing your most pertinent information toward the beginning and end of your presentation.

4. Keep it concise.

One thing board members aren’t known for is open availability. That said, you want to make the most of your time with them. How do you do that? Stick to the scope of the presentation.

While it’s great to incorporate storytelling, avoid getting sidetracked and wasting time. Be clear and keep it simple.

If you’re showing data, only share one highlight per data graph. There are several reasons for this:

• Data itself doesn’t tell a story. You, as the presenter, do. As such, you have to explain what it means and why it matters. Let’s say lead generation at your company has plateaued in the past year across all channels. That’s all the data says. But during your research, you realize it’s due to a shift in how your audience is consuming information. Your role is to present the data and explain the "why" behind the plateau along with a solution.
• You want to prevent information overload. Share the piece of data that best supports your points and has the most impact. For instance, if a new lead generation channel is the focus of your presentation, diving into the specifics of another channel may not be worth your time.

If you leave it to your audience to make sense of the data, they might reach a conclusion that doesn’t align with your message.

5. Set up early.

There’s nothing more awkward than silence during a technical difficulty.

Everyone’s looking at you while you’re figuring out why technology has forsaken you. The more time the issue takes to resolve, the more panicked you get. We’ve all been there.

To avoid this, set up early and do a run-through before your scheduled presentation time. It’ll give you time to get familiar with the space and any technology you’ll need to run during your presentation.

6. Incorporate visuals into your presentation.

When choosing between words and media, pick the latter.

Visuals help us make sense of information at a much quicker pace than words do. We’re also better at remembering what we see versus what we hear by 55% – it’s called pictorial superiority .

It’s also beneficial to keep your visuals simple. If you have too much going on, your audience will be confused. But if it’s too bare, it will take too many visuals to paint the picture. So, pull your most significant data and use data visualization tools to design intuitive graphics.

7. Focus on results.

A board of directors typically focuses on big-picture decisions that will have a long-term impact on the company.

In this vein, every piece of your presentation should get you closer to answering these questions:

• " Why does this matter? "
• " What is the long-term impact? "
• " How does this bring the company closer to its goals? "
• " Any potential roadblocks? How will you address them? "

Incorporating these answers into your presentation will set you up for a smoother Q&A session.

8. Send materials beforehand.

Depending on what you’ll be covering in your presentation, it may be helpful to send the board materials to review in advance. This should only be supplemental information that would be too time-consuming or distracting to cover in a presentation, like reports and demos. This way, the focus during the presentation will be on the "why" and not the "how."

The one material you don’t want to send is your presentation, as you want to be the one to contextualize it. Otherwise, the board might form an opinion based on limited information.

A week before the meeting is a good rule of thumb, leaving room for you to respond to initial comments or feedback.

Think of this process as an advantage. You get insight into what the board members may bring up during the meeting and more context to prep. Secondly, it ensures everyone is on the same page ahead of the meeting. That way, you can dive straight into key points during your presentation without covering minute details.

9. Build confidence with your power outfit.

Building confidence is one of the less concrete tips on the list to implement. But the good news is, there are research-backed techniques you can use to achieve it. One of them is right within your reach: clothing.

Many of us can relate to the feeling of trying on clothes in a fitting room and feeling like a million bucks. It tends to put us in a better mood and shift our perspective.

Well, turns out there’s a reason for this. In 2012, two researchers coined the term " enclothed cognition " to refer to the impact clothes can have on the psyche. They found that the clothes we wear can shift our perspective.

In that spirit, put on your best blazer or suit the day of your presentation. That outfit may be just the boost you need.

10. Rehearse your script.

During a presentation with a board of directors, you want to avoid the Michael Scott approach at all costs.

Instead, go the exact opposite route: practice. Practice is the cure to presentation jitters and the formula for seamless delivery. The more familiar you become with your content, the better the presentation will be.

If it’s been a while since your last presentation, start by practicing in the mirror. You’ll immediately notice any mannerisms that may be distracting to your audience. Recording yourself also works great.

Then, practice in front of an audience. And, unfortunately, your dog won’t cut it for this one. Practice with family or friends who can give you feedback on how to improve.

And remember: You’re the only one who knows your speech and presentation. So, if you mess up or forget to mention something, you’re likely the only one who noticed.

11. Don’t fall into the PowerPoint trap.

You’ll likely use a tool like PowerPoint to guide you during your presentation. Yet, it’s important that you don’t overly depend on it.

For instance, packing your slides with heavy text or bullet points is a surefire way to lose your audience. In fact, 40% of respondents in a 2018 study by Prezi said it caused disengagement and made it harder to retain information.

So, stick to one key point on each slide. It’s easier for your audience to remember and prevents information overload.

12. Read the room.

Even if you follow every tip listed above, you might hit a point in your presentation where there’s a disconnect between you and your audience. You might notice confused looks or a shift in body language. If that happens, that’s your cue to pivot.

If your audience seems confused, dive in a little bit deeper on your point. If you sense disagreement, tackle those concerns head-on.

Let’s say you’re proposing a new initiative for the company, and you sense some pushback on the timeline.

You can address it by saying something along the lines of, " You may have some concern regarding the timeline and whether it’s feasible given our current projects. While the timeline may seem tight, we have factored in X, Y, and Z, and, given our past initiatives, we believe this timeline will account for A, B, and C ."

A response like this can mitigate the situation while still keeping you on track.

13. Include time for questions.

As a foodie, dinner for me isn’t complete without a good piece of chocolate. Whether it’s a KitKat or a chocolate cake, having chocolate after dinner feels like the perfect ending. Q&A sessions are kind of like that. It’s the audience’s chance to ask questions and discuss the presentation.

Be ready for questions regarding the data and solutions you presented. The length of the Q&A session will vary depending on the length of your presentation, the size of the board, and other factors.

Additionally, it’s your opportunity to address any looming concerns and re-emphasize your key points. Not sure what to do if you don’t have an answer to something? Here are a few responses:

• "That’s a great question. I don’t have an answer for you at the moment, but I will follow up over email by end of day."
• "I don’t have much experience in that X [topic/department/]. However, I will reach out to X and get back to you within a week."
• "We haven’t explored that yet, but what I can tell you is …"
• "That’s a great point we hadn’t considered before. My team and I will reconvene and strategize on the best way to approach this."

When the stakes are so high, a presentation to the board can seem daunting. By incorporating these tips into your strategy, you can remove the stress and focus instead on your delivery.

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Thomas Brock , Director, CCRC

Mike Gorman, President, Salem County Community College

Who Do First-Generation College Students Turn to for Support? Implications for Research and Practice

April 3, 2024 CCRC Webinar

To improve services for first-generation college students, a CCRC study is exploring the relationships these students have both on and off campus, how those relationships support their college journeys, and how those relationships influence what college services and supports they do and do not access. This project is conducted in partnership with two California community colleges and two California State Universities and is funded by the Institute of Education Sciences.

In this webinar, CCRC researchers will describe the support networks of first-year first-generation college students, using social network survey and interview data collected during the first-year of the study. The researchers will share the types of social relations identified by students and the ways these relations enhanced students’ college experience. Colleges will find the description of first-generation students’ networks useful for designing and differentiating services for these students.

This webinar will also feature student and enrollment services staff from Cerritos Community College who will discuss the advising and student support policies and practices for serving first-generation students. The speakers will share how institutions leverage students’ personal networks to engage students. The practices outlined in this webinar may be helpful to other institutions considering ways to improve the experiences of first-generation students that they serve.

Hoori Kalamkarian , Senior Research Associate, CCRC

Melissa Herman , Senior Research Assistant and PEAR Fellow, CCRC

Traci Ukita, Career Counselor, Cerritos College

Chelena Fisher, Department Chair of Counseling/Counselor/Associate Professor, Cerritos College

Raquel Lizarraga-Christensen, School Relations Coordinator, Office of Enrollment Services, Cerritos College

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April 6, 9:30 AM–4:00 PM ET

CCRC is calling on community colleges working to promote ecological sustainability, combat climate change, and prepare students for jobs in the green economy to join us for a pre-conference convening at the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) conference. The convening is an opportunity for you to help us develop a new research agenda to support the transition to a green workforce.

Maggie P. Fay , Senior Research Associate, CCRC

Rethinking High School Dual Credit to Advance Student Success and Build Back College Enrollment

April 7, 10:00–10:45 AM ET

Enrollment of high school students taking community college dual credit courses has soared in recent years, even as the number of recent high school graduates matriculating at community colleges has declined. This session will feature a conversation with leaders of two colleges that have expanded enrollment by recent high school graduates by taking a more strategic approach to their dual credit offerings and students. Moderating the session will be a researcher from CCRC, which has recently published research on how colleges can rethink dual credit as a more effective and equitable onramp to community college degree programs for students after high school.

Davis Jenkins , Senior Research Scholar, CCRC

Greg Hodges, President, Patrick & Henry Community College

Lynda Villanueva , President, Lee College

Tracking Transfer: Community College and Four-Year Institutional Effectiveness in Broadening Bachelor’s Degree Attainment

April 7, 3:30–4:15 PM ET

For the first time, national and state-level transfer outcomes are publicly available disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and income. Leaders from CCRC and Aspen will share the latest data from the National Student Clearinghouse. See how the nation and your state fare in serving transfer students, engage with interactive data dashboards, and learn more about possible strategies for improving transfer outcomes for all students.

Josh Wyner, Vice President, Aspen Institute; Founder and Executive Director, College Excellence Program

The Role of Community Colleges in the Green Jobs Revolution

In light of an empowering new focus on how community colleges are experiencing and reacting to the pressures of climate change, join our session to hear from a panel of experts on sustainable workforce development in community colleges. Learn strategies for contributing to climate resilience and prepare your students & communities for the transition to the green economy.

Amy Seeboth-Wilson, Director of Grants, Southwest Wisconsin Technical College

Ashley Wojtalewicz, Energy Coordinator/Sustainable Energy Management Instructor, Southwest Wisconsin Technical College

Andrea Rodriguez- Blanco, Career Center Director, West Los Angeles College

Jo Tavares-Reager, Director, Center for Climate Change Education, West Los Angeles College

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Scaling Dual Enrollment Equity Pathways to College and Career Success

Advancing Racial and Socioeconomic Equity in Transfer Student Success

Building a Sustainable Future: The Role of Community Colleges in Combating Climate Change and Preparing Students for the Green Economy

AACRAO Annual Meeting

April 7–10, 2024 Columbus, OH

Measuring Up: Using New Institutional Performance Metrics to Improve Bachelor's Outcomes for Community College Transfer Students

April 9, 9:00–10:15 AM ET

The first major update to the Tracking Transfer report in eight years, released in February, introduced first-of-its-kind data on outcomes for community college transfer students at four-year institutions. Learn how you can use these metrics to benchmark your institution’s effectiveness, and to set clear goals for eliminating disparities and expanding transfer opportunity for all students who start at a community college with the dream of earning a bachelor’s degree.

Doug Shapiro, VP, Research and Executive Director, Research Center, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center

Josh Wyner, VP, The Aspen Institute; Founder and Executive Director, College Excellence Program

2024 AERA Annual Meeting

April 11–14, 2024 Philadelphia, PA

Pandemic Recovery Efforts in Practice: Community Colleges’ Use of Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds

Time TBA Philadelphia Convention Center

This symposium session presents a comprehensive review of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on community colleges and their subsequent recovery efforts. Presenters will shed light on specific recovery efforts including the use of Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) Funds at community colleges, responses to sweeping declines in community college enrollment, and impacts on economic opportunities and transfer pathways that community college students rely on to more affordably obtain bachelor's degrees. Through an interactive panel discussion, participants will have the opportunity to engage in discussion about pandemic recovery efforts and needs, leaving with valuable insights into ways to address racial/ethnic disparities at community colleges and steps to guide policymakers and practitioners in crafting effective strategies for equitable student success.

Tia Monahan , Senior Research Assistant and PEAR Fellow, CCRC

Hollie Daniels , Research Associate, CCRC

First-generation college students comprise more than one-third of undergraduates in the US but succeed at lower rates compared with their peers. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, we found that the first-generation identity is not a monolith and that these students have a variety of relationships and knowledge that moderate their campus experience. The presenters will aim to provide insight into first-generation college student identities and suggest how colleges can improve supports for first-generation students and better direct limited resources.

Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges Network

The Mathematics of Opportunity: Closing the Divide

April 16–18, 2024 Webinar

Research on Math as a Barrier and Opportunity for Transfer

April 17, 11:00 AM PST

It is imperative that all students have the math experiences that position them to pursue college degrees without the racial and socioeconomic roadblocks that have limited student success for generations. It is past time to close the divide.

Just Equations’ sixth annual Mathematics of Opportunity conference—a free, virtual event—will explore the future of equity in mathematics education and showcase the voices of education leaders, policymakers, and equity experts working to elevate math opportunities for the next generation.

This session will feature a discussion on the research and policies on the links between community college students’ math coursetaking and their opportunities to transfer to four-year universities.

Dave Kung, Director of Math Advocacy and Strategy, Charles A. Dana Center

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CAPR, with support from Ascendium Education Group, are assisting colleges and states nationwide in the adoption and implementation of MMA practices that place more students, and allow more students to be successful, in college-level courses. This presentation summarizes insights derived from this work, focusing on the adoption of multiple measures assessment in open-access colleges in Arkansas and Texas. During the presentation, researchers will present cost analysis findings, explore supporting factors for implementation, and delve into specific strategies used by colleges to tackle common implementation challenges.

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Exploring Corequisite Implementation in the CUNY System

This presentation provides insights into the implementation of corequisite models in English and math courses across seven CUNY colleges, and discusses the challenges and opportunities faced by faculty, staff and administrators while scaling corequisite courses. Findings and implications about the variability in corequisite approaches and staff experiences are explored.

Farzana Matin , Research Assistant, CCRC

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Funding Recovery: Exploring Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds at Community Colleges

The COVID-19 pandemic brought tremendous challenges to institutions of higher education across the country. Community colleges and their students, in particular, were negatively impacted. In this webinar, researchers from the Community College Research Center present findings from the Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges (ARCC) Network's analysis of Higher Education Emergency Relief funds at U.S. community colleges. The webinar includes an overview of the amount of funds awarded to community colleges, insight into how much funding was spent, and a preview of an interactive dashboard for exploring pandemic relief funding.

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68th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women

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The 68th annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68), the UN’s largest annual gathering on gender equality and women’s empowerment, will take place this year from 11 - 22 March under the priority theme, “Accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective”.

The world is at a crucial crossroad for gender equality. Globally 10.3 per cent of women live in extreme poverty today, and they are poorer than men. Progress towards ending poverty needs to be 26 times faster to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Accelerated progress requires investment. Data from 48 developing economies shows that an additional $360 billion is needed per year to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment across key global goals, including to end poverty and hunger.

In this decisive year, as 2.6 billion people go to the polls to cast their votes, they have the power to demand higher investment in gender equality.

Solutions to end women’s poverty are widely recognized: investing in policies and programmes that address gender inequalities and boosting women’s agency and leadership. Such investments yield enormous dividends: Over 100 million women and girls could be lifted out of poverty if governments prioritized education and family planning, fair and equal wages, and expanded social benefits. Almost 300 million jobs could be created by 2035 through investments in care services. Closing gender gaps in employment could boost Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita by 20 per cent across all regions .

At CSW68, governments, civil society organizations, experts and activists from across the world will come together to agree on actions and investments that can end women’s poverty and advance gender equality.

Everything you need to know about the Commission on the Status of Women

Full schedule of the Commission's two week session

Expert group meeting on CSW68 theme

UN reports and NGO statements

Member States serving as members of the Commission

Zero draft agreed conclusions

Key CSW68 events

Opening session

10 a.m. – 1 p.m.

The Commission’s first day will open with the election of officers, the adoption of the agenda and other organizational matters, and the introduction of the official documents. It will lead into a general discussion on the follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women and to the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly.

Townhall Meeting with the UN Secretary-General and Civil Society

10 -11 a.m.

The annual Townhall Meeting with the Secretary-General and Civil society on the occasion of the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women will be moderated by UN Women Executive Director, Sima Sami Bahous, and take place at the United Nations Headquarters. The session will and take place in English and will include interpretation services in all official UN languages, International Sign Language and live closed captioning is available in English. It will be webcast live at http://webtv.un.org/  

Generation Equality: Driving feminist financing and accountability for women’s economic justice and eradicating women’s poverty

11.30 a.m. - 12.45 p.m.

Hosted by UN Women’s Generation Equality and the Economic Justice and Rights Action Coalition, this side event will explore innovative multi-stakeholder approaches and tested solutions for financing women’s economic justice and rights and for eradicating women’s poverty. An Economic Justice and Rights Action Coalition accountability report will be launched highlighting progress on commitments, blueprint targets, indicators and inspiring impact stories.

Youth Forum

15 March, 4.45 – 6 p.m.;  16 March, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.;  17 March, 10 a.m.- 1 p.m.

UN Women will convene an annual CSW Youth Forum, led by young people with the support of UN Women, as a pivotal event in engaging young people in the Commission. The Forum will open at the UN Secretariat in New York on 15th of March, followed by two days at the United Nations International School on the 16th and 17th of March 2024. The Forum will provide a dynamic and interactive space that enables young participants to engage directly with policymakers, articulate their ideas, and foreground their priorities, especially regarding methods of ensuring accountability. 

Financing social protection and care systems for the fulfilment of human rights, gender equality and poverty reduction

3 p.m. – 4.15 p.m.

UN Women is convening a high-level panel of diverse leaders to discuss how social protection can be harnessed to realize human rights, promote gender equality and eradicate poverty, especially in the context of multiple crises and repeated shocks. As the global community prepares for the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (B+30) in 2025, the event will bring together speakers to highlight good practices, lessons learned and country examples on how we can accelerate progress to expand social protection.

Multistakeholder Partnerships and Practices to Push Forward for Gender Equality, Human Rights and Democracy 

UN Women is convening a high-level side event, in partnership with Member States (TBC),   UN agencies (UNDP, UNFPA, OHCHR, UNESCO - TBC), and civil society partners (TBC) to highlight how multistakeholder, issue-based coalitions at the country level, can accelerate and safeguard gender equality gains.

Your guide to CSW68

How gender equality can reduce poverty

Placing gender equality at the heart of the Global Digital Compact: Taking forward the recommendations of CSW67

Five things to accelerate women's economic empowerment

Everything you need to know about pay equity

What is gender-responsive budgeting?

Unpacking the care society: Caring for people and planet

Making investment in violence prevention a priority

News and stories.

Why investing in women’s organizations is critical during crisis: Five stories of resilience

At CSW68, Generation Equality calls for feminist financing and collective action for women’s economic justice

We want to have our voices out there' – Young women speak out at CSW68

Financing social protection and care systems turbocharges economies, reduces poverty

A glimpse into the lives of Afghan women

Media Advisory: On International Women’s Day, UN Women calls on investing in women as the best solution to face growing crises

Speeches and statements.

We are not deterred – Let us push forward together for gender equality

Ambitiously proactive – Generation Equality brings hope to stalled progress and financing

‘The patriarchy may be pushing back, but so are we’

‘We can and must choose to end poverty for women and girls’

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OBI Pharma Announces Poster Presentations at the AACR 2024 Annual Meeting for OBI-992 and GlycOBI™ ADC platform

TAIPEI, Taiwan, March 18, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OBI Pharma, Inc. (TPEx: 4174) today announced preclinical data for OBI-992, a potential best-in-class anti-TROP2 Antibody-Drug Conjugate (ADC). When evaluated against comparative TROP2 ADCs, OBI-992 demonstrated greater antitumor efficacy, superior PK/PD properties, and a favorable safety profile across various preclinical animal models. Additionally, preclinical data will be presented on the novel site-specific proprietary GlycOBI™ ADC platform, demonstrating improved in vivo efficacy and stability in animal model studies.

These data will be presented at the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting from April 5 to 10, 2024 in San Diego, California (USA).

“Our data suggest OBI-992 has the potential to become a best-in-class TROP2 ADC. OBI-992 binds to a TROP2 epitope that is distinct from that of datopotamab and sacituzumab. OBI-992 shows lower non-specific binding, which should lead to decreased off-target cytotoxicity compared to benchmark ADCs. OBI-992 demonstrated remarkable anti-tumor efficacy in several CDX and PDX models. In addition, OBI-992 showed excellent bystander effect and synergistic efficacy in combination with PARP inhibitors or anti-PD1 in animal models. OBI-992 was stable in circulation and well tolerated in cynomolgus monkeys, suggesting a good safety profile” said OBI’s Chief Scientific Officer, Ming-Tain Lai, Ph.D. “In addition, OBI developed a proprietary site-specific conjugation GlycOBI ADC platform to produce homogeneous ADCs. Preclinical studies demonstrated that the ADCs derived from GlycOBI platform showed better anti-tumor efficacy and PK profile. We are excited about the potential of applying this platform to generate novel ADCs to address unmet medical needs and provide cancer patients with better treatment options. These encouraging results warrant further clinical development.”

Title: OBI-992, a novel TROP2 targeting antibody-drug conjugate, displayed excellent antitumor efficacy in various animal models 1

Authors * : Wan-Fen Li, Ming-Feng Chiang, Hao-Cheng Weng, Jhih-Jie Yang, Hsin-Shan Wu, Chun-Jung Lin, Ping-Tzu Chiu, and Ming-Tain Lai Session Title:  Antibody-Drug Conjugates and Bispecific Antibodies Location: Poster Section 23 Poster Board Number: 4 Abstract Presentation Number: 1893 Session Date and Time: Monday April 8, 2024. 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Title: In vitro characterization of a novel TROP2-targeting antibody-drug conjugate OBI-992   2

Authors * : Tzer-Min Kuo, Ting-Yu Chang, Jye-Yu Huang, Wei-Chien Tang, Chun-Jung Lin, Yi-Chen Wu, Chi-Huan Lu, Hao-Cheng Weng, Yu-Jung Chen, Yu-Hsuan Tsao, Cheng-Yen Wei, Lifen Shen, Wan-Fen Li, and Ming-Tain Lai Session Title: Antibody-Drug Conjugates Location: Poster Section 21 Poster Board Number: 11 Abstract Presentation Number: 3130 Session Date and Time:  Monday April 8, 2024. 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Title: Development of a novel site-specific ADC glycan platform with potential for improved in vivo efficacy and stability of the ADC in animal studies 3

Authors * : Teng-Yi Huang, Yin-Cheng Hsieh, Ka-Shu Fung, Yu-Chao Huang, Chi-Sheng Shia, Ming-Feng Chiang, Nan-Hsuan Wang, Wan-Fen Li, and Ming-Tain Lai Session Title:  Antibody-Drug Conjugates Location: Poster Section 21 Poster Board Number: 30 Abstract Presentation Number: 3149 Session Date and Time: Monday, April 8, 2024. 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Title: OBI-992, a novel TROP2 targeting antibody drug conjugate demonstrates superior in vivo PK/PD properties and a favorable safety profile 4

Authors * : Chi-Sheng Shia, Shih-Ni Wen, Ren-Yu Hsu, Jyy-Shiuan Tu, Hui-Wen Chang, Wan-Fen Li, and Ming-Tain Lai Session Title:  Pharmacology and Pharmacogenetics Location: Poster Section 24 Poster Board Number: 20 Abstract Presentation Number: 7179 Session Date and Time: Wednesday April 10, 2024. 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM

* OBI Pharma, Inc., Taipei, Taiwan. 1 , 2 , 3 , 4  : AACR Annual Meeting 2024 Abstracts online

The e-posters will be available for browsing at the AACR Annual Meeting beginning at 12:00 PM ET on April 5, as well as on the OBI Pharma website ( http://www.obipharma.com ) beginning on April 11.

About OBI-992

OBI-992 is a TROP2-targeted antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) that carries a potent topoisomerase I inhibitor payload to kill tumor cells. TROP2 is highly expressed in a variety of solid tumors such as lung, breast, ovarian, and gastric cancer, rendering it an ideal target for cancer therapy.

OBI-992 uses a unique hydrophilic, enzyme-cleavable linker that is stable in circulation but releases the cytotoxic payload inside tumor cells. OBI-992 demonstrates remarkable antitumor efficacy, improved pharmacokinetic characteristics, and a favorable safety profile in animal models. OBI-992 received US IND clearance in January 2024, Phase 1/2 efficacy and safety human studies are planned to commence early Q2, 2024.

The TROP2 targeting antibody was in-licensed from Biosion, Inc. www.Biosion.com , in December 2021. OBI Pharma owns ex-China commercial rights for OBI-992.

About GlycOBI™

OBI has developed a unique glycan ADC platform (GlycOBI™), which are in a ‘Plug and Play’ format and compatible with any antibodies, linkers, and payloads in various Drug Antibody Ratio (DAR). Utilizing OBI’s proprietary enzymatic technology (EndoSymeOBI™), GlycOBI generates site-specific homogenous ADCs with an efficient and scalable process. The conjugation process of GlycOBI avoids disrupting the antibody structure and ensures the ADC has similar biophysical characteristics to the native antibody. Furthermore, OBI’s linker technology has improved conjugation efficiency of the payload and reduced aggregation propensity, and also expanded the half-life of the ADC products. GlycOBI has overcome the limitations of traditional ADCs and achieved better efficacy and stability in various in vivo tests.

GlycOBI™ and EndoSymeOBI™ are trademarks of OBI Pharma. Inc.

About OBI Pharma

OBI Pharma, Inc., is a clinical stage oncology company that is headquartered in Taiwan and established in 2002. Its mission is to develop novel cancer therapeutic agents for patients with high unmet medical needs.

The company’s novel first-in-class immuno-oncology portfolio targeting Globo H includes: two Globo H active immunotherapy vaccines, Adagloxad Simolenin (formerly OBI-822) and OBI-833. Using the company’s unique ADC platforms, including GlycOBI™, OBI created its novel ADC pipelines, OBI-992, OBI-902 and OBI-904, targeting TROP2 and Nectin-4, respectively. OBI’s pipeline also includes the first-in-class AKR1C3-targeted small-molecule prodrug OBI-3424, which selectively releases a potent DNA-alkylating antitumor agent in the presence of the aldo-keto reductase 1C3 (AKR1C3) enzyme. Additional information can be found at www.obipharma.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements included in this press release that are not a description of historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about future clinical trials, results and the timing of such trials and results. Such risk factors are identified and discussed from time to time in OBI Pharma’s reports and presentations, including OBI Pharma’s filings with the Taiwan Securities and Futures Bureau.

COMPANY CONTACT: Kevin Poulos, CBO OBI Pharma, Inc. 1.619.537.7698 Ext. 102 [email protected]

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