We have all been there: having dealt with being stuck in traffic, finding parking, and rushing past a secretary into a conference room. You finally have you bearings straight and are looking forward to what you hope will be a productive use of your time. Suddenly the lights dim, a screen comes down and the whir of a projector’s cooling fan comes on. Its the dreaded power-point presentation, and as you begin to yawn and your eyes glaze over you wonder why you couldn’t be at the dentist getting your teeth drilled rather than have to sit through the impending doom that is a boring presentation.

All exaggerations aside, we have all had to sit through some pretty tough presentations, and it is even worse when you are the presenter. The following tips have been compiled in an effort to try to make your presentations more beneficial to those watching and thereby generate more interest in your pitch.

1. It’s a presentation, not a book - Use your slides only to convey main points and present multimedia. If all you plan on doing is reading your slides, save everyone some time and send out a well-composed email or letter. A good tactic to make a take home version of the presentation with the notes that you want them to have attached.
2. Don’t use notes while you present - Take some time to practice memorizing what you want to say and then use your slides to keep yourself on track. If you spend your whole time reading your notes, your voice will become monotone and your audience will stop paying attention.
3. Be extemporaneous - Don’t take yourself too seriously and keep your audience engaged. Vary the pitch of your voice, walk around, and use your hands a little bit to emphasize what you are saying. The focus should be on you, so make sure that you make it that way.
4. Get a remote control - This goes back to the last tip. If you sit behind your laptop in order to advance slides, the focus will be on the slides and not you. Stand in front of your audience and use a remote control to advance  your slides. Remote controls can be found at big box electronics stores like Circuit City. Many computer manufacturers (including Apple) have built in IR receivers that work with remote controls that are sold by the manufacturers.
5. Keep it classy - Make sure that the design of your presentation represents your brand well. Make a theme that is consistent throughout your presentation. Ensure that this theme is unique enough to make it stand out from every other PowerPoint that your audience has seen, but make sure that it doesn’t distract from your presentation. You should be very careful with your transitions: pick one and stick with it. Make sure that it is not too wild.
6. Say no to word art - Just don’t do it. Enough said.
7. Break away from PowerPoint - There are many applications out there that can be used to create great presentations. Apple makes an application called Keynote that in my opinion is far superior to PowerPoint and costs far less. There is also an up and coming online presentation service called SlideRocket that allows for all sorts of collaboration as well as a community available for content procurement.
8. Summarize at the end - Even if you are the best presenter in the world, there will always be someone who had to step out to take a phone call, use the rest room, or sleep off jet-lag. By summerizing at the end, you will give them the opportunity to see what they missed.
9. Extra Credit - Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Computer has a reputation as being one of the best presenters in the world. Go to http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/specialevent1008/ and check out his latest keynote where he reviewed company financial information while unveiling several highly anticipated products.

Check out a presentation that I made that would go with this blog posting by visiting http://app.sliderocket.com/app/FullPlayer.aspx?id=ECA7492C-3AD4-076A-8DB0-64D8A00CD004

What are your presentation best practices? Share them by making a comment!