Having recently completed my first public speaking engagement for the SUGUK I had the misfortune to experience some of the ‘live demo’ demons. I think I managed to recover, and even received a round of applause when the Excel sheet was rendered in the browser, but it did hit home to me that I need to update my toolkit to help cope with future presentations. Darren Strange (Office Rocker) has posted a really good post ‘Death by PowerPoint – Giving better presentations‘. It was also very reassuring to see that even seasoned professionals have off days

Whilst looking for ways to improve my presenting I came across the following that may be useful.

Jeffery Veen – Seven Steps to better presentations
Apple -v- Microsoft – the different presenting styles
How to get a standing ovation – Point 4. Know your audience would have really helped me as I was planning to do a demo coding against the Excel Web Services. I did not know the audience was mostly admins until I had to offer them a preference. Had I found this out up front I could have tweaked the presentation but kept it slick.

What next:- Learn some stories, practice, practice and practice more. Be confident and talk from the heart about things I am passionate about – like MOSS 2007