How to effectively present in English in the 21st Century

Most presentations that I attend or see online begin with nothing spectacular. They usually begin with a “Good morning. Thank you for coming today”. And while this is an OK beginning, that is exactly what it is. It is an “OK” beginning.

There is no inspiration, there is no excitement, and lets be honest the media have not been hyping your presentation for the previous 4 months. Steve Jobs may be able to get the audience excited with a “good morning. Thank you for coming today” beginning, the chances of you being able to do so are pretty slim.

I would not suggest you come running down the centre isle of the room like a TV Presenter or a pop star, but there are a few little things that you can do to help get your presentation off to a great start that wins your audience over and gets the atmosphere moving into a positive direction.

The first method I first saw Garr Reynolds do when he presented at Google Authors, it is simple, but very effective. Below is a sample of how he used animation to say “thank you”

In this slide you see a simple, small “thank you”. When Garr Reynolds shows this slide he says “I just want to say thank you, but not just a small thank you, a really big thank you”

As he says “… a really big thank you” the slide changes from the above slide to the slide below.

This is a nice simple way to get your audience smiling, if not laughing, and really does help to get your audience into a positive frame of mind.

Another way to begin your presentation is to begin with an amazing statistic. For example:

This is a slide that Steve Jobs used in his January 2010 presentation to introduce the iPad. That is an awesome statistic and one that had the audience clapping. Again, the objective of such an opening is to create a positive atmosphere and both the methods I have shown here certainly help to achieve that goal.

One of my favourite opening at the moment is to use video to introduce myself – I talked about the use of HD video as a background to your welcome slide in a previous post, and I have recently been using it to introduce myself when I open a presentation. (you can view that post here)

Another interesting way to make your opening a little more interesting is to use images from your own life (I admit this is another idea from Garr Reynolds) I used this style when I opened my presentation at TED MeongDong, Korea. Below is my slide deck from that presentation.

So when you open your next presentation, think about how you can utilise some creativity to make your opening a little more interesting. It not only makes you look more interesting, it also makes the whole event of your presentation more interesting.