I am excited to give my first presentation regarding .Net!  It is C# and .Net training for a division of the company I work for.  Having worked for a number of large corporations, I am no stranger to a presentation.  One company I worked for had a unofficial slogan of “You don’t really understand something until you create a Powerpoint for it!”  As I began to create slides, I wanted to ensure that the attendees didn’t fall prey to Dilbert’s fictitious Powerpoint Poisoning.  After completing the slides to give an idea of what information would be covered, I set off to find ways to improve the presentation.  I ran across Scott’s suggestions and they were very helpful.  I also found the book Presenting to Win to be very helpful.  Here is what I learned in a nutshell.

Tips:

·         Keep it simple and keep your audience in mind – What’s in it for them.

·         Practice taping with audio and video to see the audience’s perspective.

·         You presentation should not be able to be emailed around beforehand.  It should not make sense without the most important part – the presenter.

·         Create a separate user on your machine for presentations

o        Set the Windows and IE font to large

o        Use Lucida Console 18-24 pt Font for everything – Bold and Shaded It’s easier to see

Tools:

·         ZoomIn – Nice for presentations to large amounts of people

·         SnippetCompiler – Useful for quick demos

·         Reflector – This is just cool, much better than ILDasm

·         VSConvert – To get the right version of VS.Net solutions

·         QuickCode.Net – Also good to eliminate mistakes from quick coding sessions