Silhouettes

Great for an internal meeting silhouettes can be a great ice breaker. It can be a good guessing game - particularly if you can get silhouettes of people who are in the room. Silhouettes can be made either by using tracing paper or by using a photo editing package such as Photoshop. This is a silhouette was produced in about ten minutes using Adobe Photoshop.

Buy a digital camera

Adding pictures to your presentation can be very powerful. One of the quickest ways to do this is to buy a digital camera. You can get a good model for around £200. You can then start taking pictures and add them to your talks.

The camera never lies

Well that used to be the case. Now you can get powerful photo editing software. One of the best on the market is Adobe Photoshop Elements. This software will allow you to cut down the size of photos, and cut out and combine photos. As an idea, you can cut out a picture of your boss and put him in a different background.

Dressing up

Phil Walker once gave a talk around the theme of CRM by illustrating the speech by comparing it to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. To illustrate the point he and a couple of his assistants dressed up in togas. If you are going to use this technique you need to be sure of your audience.

Put time in the diary to prepare.

Winston Churchill said that it only took him all of 10 minutes to prepare a two-hour speech, but it took him two hours to prepare a 10 minute one. His maiden speech took six weeks to prepare and was completely memorized.

Sod's law states that "It it can go wrong, it usually will".

Be prepared. Have a back up plan. If you have your presentation on a laptop, back it up on a CD ROM and carry ahard copy with you. Take a spare power lead. Plan what to do if the projector breaks down.

Use the right fonts.

Verdana is a great title font..

Arial or Tahoma are very clear for use in presentations. We use Tahoma on this site.

Comic Sans MS can work if you want to be lighthearted but can show signs of insecurity.

Avoid "Times New Roman" - this is best for printed paragraphs.

You may also find more inspiration and ideas on our presentation tips page.

Have you come across any other ideas for your presentation that you have used or you have seen work well? Please drop us a line. This way we can all learn from our shared experiences.