Presenting to people

[hawkida]

One of the things we do at work is to have small bursts of work known as "sprints". We plan what we'll cover at the start, work on it, then present it with a demo at the end, to all interested parties. On Friday they asked me to do the demonstation part of our presentation.

I went in with no preparation beyond writing down on a post it note the four things I wanted to show people. I stood up and talked to the room of somewhere around 50-60 people about it, and then we moved on. There were more presentations and demonstartions, the last of which was very innovative and flashy and interesting.

After the meeting eight different people came and told me separately how well they thought I'd done. I've been told I paced it well, I was engaging, I put things at the right level for the audience, and that I was a natural.

Now, I was comfortable with the material I was talking about, but I had no preparation time, and didn't feel particularly nervous. This morning two more people told me how well I'd done - and that's after they had a whole weekend for it to fall out of their heads completely.

I appear to have wowed an audience. I can only attribute this to being a side effect of learning to present material in an off-the-cuff way through larp. Give me a skeleton and I can give you back a ritual. Dump some plot on me and I can manufacture a rite. Tell me where we're going and I can pull a transportation rite out of nowhere. And give me the thing I've been working on for three weeks and I can tell you all about it and make it sound impressive.

As a colleague said on Friday - the trick is to work out how to make this skill work for me. Hmm.

Comments

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on a job well done, and on discovering something cool about yourself.

[andrewducker]

That's fantastic.

And I'm sure it will turn out to be useful. Now that you have some confidence speaking in front of rooms you can use that to get your ideas listened to more!

[watervole.livejournal.com]

The LARP experience could well be the key to it. It's the confidence to speak without a script - and without a script always results (at least in my experience) to a better engagement with the audience.

You're watching the audience and reacting to them, rather than focusing on the exact words you're going to say.

[j-lj.livejournal.com]

This is how a friend of mine started in stand up comedy. His confidence grew after giving a few presentations at work.

the trick is to work out how to make this skill work for me

[ingaborg.livejournal.com]

As well as being useful in presentations, it might help you interview better if you decide to look for a better job...

Anyway, bloody well done! I hate giving presentations and am completely rubbish at them.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Slightly belated thumbs up! Sounds like a very desirable to hear; now just keep thinking, and improvising, and developing.