Presenting... My first Presentation

The presentation on William Wallace was my very first and I had lots of help from my father. I owe a lot of my presentation skills to my father. So this post is dedicated to my dad.

First let me give a little background. The presentation was due on Monday. Me and my friend had planned to do it over the weekend on Environment. She faced a family situation, her relatives had come from abroad and she couldn't make it. I was very low in spirits as I had no idea what to do. Two days, one presentation. My dad came to my rescue and gave me confidence.

Research: We surfed a lot of websites (this was before Wikipedia arrived) and collected a sizeable chunk of information and pictures.

Organisation: My dad said we needed to categorise all that we needed. He said that but didn't get to it. I asked him why? And I got a mumbling from which “no mood” was highly audible. I was kind of confused when I realised what he was doing. He was searching templates. His favourite technique to really get into the presentation was to spend some time on its appearance. Its a golden rule I've always followed. Finally, we made about twenty slide headings in Lucida Blackletter font. Then, we racked our brains for a title and finally the “Scottish Pride” was chosen. The template was the one with spectacles on the title slide and parchment feel to it.

Layout: Never have too much text. That's another nugget I learnt. I had real fun during this session. I mean William Wallace had a five-foot long sword and there was slide dedicated to that alone. There was another one where I mentioned Age of Empires too.

Sound: The soundtrack was Age of Empires || open. Also, I recorded my voice for all the text in the slides. Ah, all the trouble I went through.

“The Scottish Pride”

You're supposed to sound proud not sleepy

“The Scottish Pride”

Louder, even I can't hear.

“The Pride.. chi.. Scottish”

What was the Scottish for?

“The Scottish Pride”

Perfect! But the fan is too loud, let me switch it off.

The final slide has a neat little custom animation with a curtain descending and my dad added the clap sound effect.

I went to the AV room. I switched off the lights. I started it and sat down, everything was automatic.

The claps drowned the digital ones.