We had presentations for internal team by internal team members last week. It was a good experience and i think each and every member got benefited with this. I am just giving some feedback on how it was from my view, and it is not intended for making fun or hurting sentiments.The sole purpose of this post is to make people aware, what are the common mistakes people do and how we can avoid them.
1) First day : This person , only one day before i asked him to give presentation and he agreed. He was confident , he selected the topic on which he was working.He started with writing all the topics on board and explained the scope of discussion, topics he is going to cover and what are not covered in the session. After that he started in detail about each topic and covered well.
2) Second Day :Next day, we had presentation in which the presenter was confident but the selected topic was very vast and it has to be explained in detail. He started nicely , but it was like he started using too many technical jargon, which few people were not able to understand. So it started and finished , but it could have been better.
3) Third Day: We had a nice presentation , the presenter did well in explaining the topic and showing slides and details whenever required.
4) Fourth day : We had an informal discussion on various things, as actual presenter was on leave.I explained the manufacturing process in general , how the embedded boards are actually formed, what are the various stages it has to go before reaching to our hands and we had some discussion on deployment scenarios.
5) Fifth day : We had a presentation on RIP, this person started off nicely with explanation on what is route , static route, what is routing, network, different types of routing protocol (link state, distance vector) , count to infinity, route poisoning and split horizon. It was already one hr , in the end one person asked "Are we going to start RIP now ?".
We all had a good laugh and concluded that as time is already over we will go for another session on RIP (only RIP)
So as you see, every person has a way of giving presentation , but it make sense only when the whole team is able to understand what you are saying. Always prepare presentation based on the audience, and it is very-very much required that "You" get used in giving presentation. Experience and number of years does not matter.
Learn from your mistakes and start by giving overview of topics which you are going to cover. If some one asks question and you are not sure , write it down and tell them that after presentation, you'll let them know.
Take feedback from your fellow members after presentation. Use technical terms but expand it or explain it so that all know what you are telling, also do not go to very basic, thinking that people doesn't know even basic things, it will be a waste of time for all.
One person i remember used "actually" too much during presentation, even his every 3 sentence started with "actually", but as he become more comfortable in giving presentations he could understand and started avoiding "actually" and used it only when actually it was required. :-) :-)
Don't think too much and start giving presentations as soon as possible, plan for at least one presentation per year.
Happy Learning , Happy Sharing !
