Tips to remember:
1. SMILE!!
2. Speak loudly and clearly--no mumbling allowed!
3. Make eye contact with your audience.
4. Project self confidence through body language.
5. Select proper business/professional attire when making your presentation.
1. Did you preview the site? Check room size, acoustics, lighting (and how to control it, if it's controllable), microphones, availability of a blackboard, chalk, electrical outlets, where people enter and exit, etc.
2. Do you know where your equipment is? Confirm your order for an overhead, etc. Plan where to locate your handouts. Consider whether you should have them available in advance or after your talk.
3. Establish where you will situate yourself with relation to your graphics and equipment. Will you block the view? How will you point things out? Where should your notes rest?
4. Once you've been announced, you are on stage. From the moment you were introduced you have been the focus of the audience's attention. It has no one else to look at but you. Move confidently.
5. When you're ready to begin- don't. Wait! Take a moment to catch your breath. (Remember- abdominal breathing!) Make a pleasant face at the audience. Take a comfortable stance. Breathe. Look at everyone before you start.
6. Keep an eye on your equipment as you move around or move things around. Avoid lengthy silences while you adjust equipment or arrange visuals or write on the blackboard. Talk and do. Watch where you're walking. Don't get tangled up in electrical cords. Keep your overheads in order as you use them. Don't get too close to the microphone.
7. Questions: the inaudible, the complex, the unanswerable, and the hostile. Repeat questions to the rest of the audience. Feel free to comment, e.g., "That's a good question!" Break complicated ones into simple components; tell the person asking a question you can't answer that you'll get back to him/her later or that you don't know. Don't respond to hostile questions by repeating the accusation; answer positively.
8. Head up when you're done! End naturally, without a "thank you." Look at the audience and acknowledge to them that you are done. Save your "thank you" for the roar of applause. Smile. Leave the podium as slowly as you walked to it. Don't look as if you're escaping. Head up all the way back to your seat!