Signs of a good presentation

1. speaking clearly and projecting your voice
2. eye contact with the audience
3. having something interesting to talk about
4. talk about engaging your audience (pull you in and get you interested in)
5. articulate and be clear
6. good speakers put pauses in appropriate places
7. make sure you've thought about it and it's organized and it doesn't jump all over the place
8. thinking on the fly is important even when people ask a question
9. use of visual presentations (especially tom's movie about the lawnmower)
10. Look at the audience instead of looking at your notes
11. it's good to have notes too in case you forget
12. connect with the audience by opening with an interesting statement or joke
13. throw in a compliment to the teacher
14. keep it succinct and thought about what I said before getting in front of the class
15. described the background of the system briefly
16. described what the system does
17. described the changes he wanted to make
18. skip redundant and already known information and get to specific information
19. the visual presentation managed to emphasize eye contact and showing a video takes the focus from the speaker
20. make eye contact with audience
21. have interesting material and be interested in your own material so the audience will be more interested
22. be sure of yourself and don't second guess yourself or apologize
23. be prepared beforehand and have notes so questions won't catch you off guard
24. prepare for the presentation in front of friends with a watch
25. make sure you know your time limits and what your audience knows and doesn't know
26. made decent eye contact
27. eye contact shows confidence and that you're not reading from a script
28. have an interesting opening- if you don't grab your audience at the beginning, you get lost
29. refer back to points others have made
30. keep the audience in mind so they are appropriate in terms of content and background
31. listen to other presentations carefully
32. make good eye contact
33. spoke clearly and loud enough
34. have an idea of what he was going to say
35. follow the time limit
36. emphasize the program name (title of talk)- if you miss this your audience will get lost thereafter
37. good job with the audience and described the system
38. good job with eye contact
39. structure the talk and let the audience know what points you're going to get to
40. get the material at the right level for the audience- too simple and you'll insult/bore your audience and too complex and you'll lose your audience
41. smiling will reduce the intimidation of eye contact
42. only use hand gestures if they're related to the topic of the presentation
43. most people got it within the alloted time
44. spoke loud enough for everyone to hear
45. everyone got their point across even if they were nervous
46. talked about the stuff we needed to talk about I.e. system name and changes planned
47. it helped when the presenters were interested in their topic- if they aren't bored, I'm not bored
48. it helped when people spoke slowly and clearly and were brief with their introduction and got to the point with their planned changes
49. it helped that they really knew what was wrong with the system and went on to discuss the proposed changes
50. organized with topics
51. I could understand it very well when the voice was loud and clear
52. some of them were clear and loud
53. some used humor
54. some knew exactly how to present their system and went on to cover the changes in a minute
55. some people were well prepared and knew what their system was about and what changes they wanted to make
56. if the audience had used the system before they already understood what they were talking about
57. people tried to write their names neatly on the board so I could recognize who the speaker was
58. it was good when people involved the audience and used props to get the audience to feel more involved and get them to care
59. most people were very clear and spoke loudly enough for me to hear in the back
60. most of them were interesting programs that need to be changed
61. some people were very prepared
62. the session was very interesting in that I learned about what people do
63. at the end of every session, the audience clapped which makes people feel better
64. practice the speech a lot

Things to watch out for when giving presentations

1. talking too quickly
2. fidget
3. rambling
4. don't bore the audience
5. talking too quickly
6. was a little nervous trying to get through the material on time
7. presentation is too short and not well prepared
8. didn't cover all the points since others had covered them earlier
9. didn't use hand gestures and they help when presenting
10. don't say "um" a lot- it shows you don't know what you're talking about
11. you don't want to be overly animated but you've got to show you care about it to make your audience care about it
12. supplement your oral presentation with visual aids especially if you've got an accent
13. could not elaborate the background and comparison between his system and others
14. could not complete all of the change proposals and he had an accent
15. spoke too quickly
16. didn't make eye contact
17. wasn't aware the presentation was yesterday
18. go off topic and add unnecessary info and jargon
19. use too many clichés and colloquialisms
20. avoid saying "um"
21. don't talk too fast and start rambling
22. sped through the topic too quickly and felt pressure due to the time limit
23. didn't make any notes or prepare well enough for the topic
24. make sure you know the time limit on the presentation so you don't end up with too much content for the amount of time
25. spoke too much about a topic he knew too well and the audience did as well
26. didn't get to demonstrate what he had in mind
27. avoid saying "um"
28. don't be nervous
29. didn't look at the audience as much
30. paced somewhat
31. didn't have an interesting opening statement
32. spoke in monotone
33. spoke too deeply about one topic and forgot what he was going to say next
34. the company was making some of the changes he was going to propose already so he had to modify his talk
35. hard to tell time especially with the clock out of periphery
36. people rushed through it and got nervous
37. didn't make eye contact or zoned out
38. didn't elaborate enough and you were clueless about what they were talking about
39. writing the names of each speaker was too slow and made people rush, especially towards the end, so we missed the content of each speech
40. it was repetitive that there were projects that were closely related
41. I don't have eye contact with the audience
42. didn't control the time well
43. I was too nervous
44. because of the time limit, there wasn't much of a response from the audience
45. some of the presentations were interrupted by alex with the time warnings
46. some of the systems proposed I didn't understand, they lost me
47. some went way over
48. some went off topic
49. as the time ran out in class, people started talking before they got to the front of the room
50. some folks gave just a few features and went into great detail while others listed each of the features on a very high level
51. some people were rushing through the presentation
52. some people didn't go into detail about their system and thus the audience couldn't understand what they were talking about
53. it was bad when people wrote their names near another's as it created confusion
54. some people were well prepared and others were making it up off the cuff
55. people gave too much detail rather than getting to the point
56. alex's interruptions with the time warning killed the flow of some of the presentations
57. it was a one minute presentation so there wasn't much time to talk about your individual project
58. you can't tell a lot about the product in one minute- basically just the stuff you emailed to alex