How to do a flawless and natural presentation?

Question

I have been attending a number of academic / professional conferences recently and one thing that really awed me was the flawless and natural way in which the speakers presented on their topics.Sure, they had the occasional mispronunciations or awkward pauses but they spoke with authority and confidence. Some of them used powerpoint slides but were not reading from the slides; they were just talking on the points and they had so much to say on each point that I felt they could not do it without notes, but they were not even looking at their notes most of the time.(The advantages of not looking at their notes too much was that they could maintain eye contact and could use very interesting slides that were not crammed with the dot points of their speeches.)I hate to think that they had memorised their speech notes but some of the presentations went for more than an hour.I know rehearsal is important but I wonder how could anyone remember so much in a nervous situation. (Its one thing to know everything on your topic; its another thing to present that 'everything'!)**Question:** What background / foreground things do presenters do that make their presentations flawless and natural?

Answer 1

You do a "flawless and natural presentation" by making a lot of mistakes and awkward rehearsals beforehand.

Let's take knowing your subject matter cold as a given. From that point on it's about knowing how much time you have available, the objective of your presentation, and the audience. A PowerPoint slide takes about 2 minutes to brief, and the fount should be around 26-30 points. You have to fit your presentation into those parameters.

The toughest part for even an experienced presenter is deciding what information will go on the screen and what will be said during the presentation. That is an art form. You can learn it yourself through the dreaded live rehearsal, or you can use a coach who will teach you.

Everyone, even experts, is nervous before a presentation - it gets you ready for the event. Even the brave are afraid before combat. What you want to avoid are the nerves that come from not feeling fully prepared. You can gain confidence through preparation and more confidence by the "pressure testing" applied by a coach.