Have you ever get lost in the middle of your presentation - when you’re speaking? Or maybe you haven’t, but want to anticipate it? Here are 4 ways to do when you get lost, hold the presentation for a while, and let your mind get back on the game!

1. Tell Story

Telling related story is one of the “smoothest” way to hide your absent-minded trait (just kidding, everyone ever forget something, right?). Just remember to tell it naturally. Real-life story is highly recommended. Making your own story is also cool if you don’t have a real-life one. Just make sure it’s related, not so time-wasting (you need to get back to your presentation), and you shouldn’t look like “telling fake story” when you tell it, people will know it and immediately lose interest in your story.

2. Use Distraction Point

Using distraction point is the easiest way to waste some time and let you remember about your presentation. But, distraction point often only delay the presentation for short amount of time - a minute, or even few seconds. You don’t need any real-life experience or knowledge. One good example is to compliment the audience and let them give applause - that will hold the time for few seconds.

3. Let The Audience Choose

This is the most classy way to hold the time and let your mind find the way. But this method is a risky one. You should be an expert in your field. When you get lost in the middle of your presentation, let the audience choose what to talk about next - much like a Q&A section (but it’s not). If you’re an expert, you’ll be fine ‘cause you’ll be ready for anything the audience asks.

4. Play A Game

Playing a game with the audience wastes a lot of time, surely. But yeah, it’s fun, and it leaves “cheerful speaker” label to you. When you get lost, you can just pick some audience and play a game - or you can even let all of them play the game! Just remember that your game must be well-designed, time-aware, and fun-guaranteed.

Hello guys. Today, I want to give you some icons to help you present something. These icons are:

Home Icon

Home icon was made to help you get back to specific page (like your presentation's main page) with just one click. There are some home icons with different colors. These downloadable home icons already came with well-set transparency. They are all ready to use  minimalist circle-shaped home icons.

Directional Icon

Directional icon is a stylized form of traditional next-or-previous slide style. Commonly, people just tap the right or left arrow, or do a click to make the slide move. But, with the existence of directional icon, you can put few stylish "next slide" and "previous slide" buttons. This is useful for your presentation, especially when your presentation has complex slides system, someone copied your presentation, and he will be confused.

Callout Icon

Want to score your own presentation? Is it good? or bad a.k.a faulty? Well, to help you score your own presentation, I’ve wrote 6 signs of a faulty presentation. Let’s know whether your presentation was faulty or not.

1. The audience does not get the value of your presentation

No matter how good your presentation is, how fun it is, if the audience does not get the value of your presentation, it actually does not go well.

When you talk about bicycle, no matter how hard the audience laugh because of your joke about “square-shaped tire”, if the audience does not get the value of your presentation like “why bicycle is the best transportation device in the matter of human health”, then, your presentation is just a bullshit, because it just entertains, not educates.

2. Some of the audience slept

Yeah, as all of us know, sleeping audience means that our presentation is boring. That hurts, and that’s the sign of faulty presentation.

And how to fix this? I think your presentation lacks curiosity point. You must add some curiosity points and some promises to keep the audience awake. And one thing again, no matter how much you add curiosity points, the audience will fall asleep anyway if you don’t serve them with interestingly great content.

3. The audience wasn’t impressed with your “special moments”

You’ve made a quote, made some promises, and told a story, the audience was not impressed anyway. This is a sign of faulty presentation.

But, why is this happens? Yeah, I see two possibilities here. First, the audience think that your quote, story, etc. is a mainstream one. They have seen it in their life with a slightly different form, or unfortunately, exactly same. The second possibility is that your audience does not get what you mean. They may think that your quote is too confusing or unrelated.

4. The audience just went and left

“Went and left” here means that your presentation is not remarkable enough to make the audience leave with gratefulness or regret inside their mind. This is a sign of faulty presentation because you wasted your chance. The chance to make people remember you and your presentation. People just went to your presentation and left plainly, thinking that your presentation was “plain and boring”.

5. You didn’t make any special moment

This case is rare, but it may possible. Usually, most of us spontaneously make special moments, which means that we don’t plan about it. But, sometimes, we did not make any special moment at all. This will absolutely make your presentation bad, literally, faulty.

6. There are no “feeling” in your presentation

This one is the one you mustn’t forget. Maybe your presentation educates people well, but it does not have any “feeling” in it. You may tell people about how many people died in World War, but you don’t tell people how it feels to know your closest friend dead. Actually, this “feeling” is more important than the content itself. This “feeling” is the one that makes your presentation remarkable. This “feeling” is indirectly classified as special moment too.

That’s 6 signs that you’ve done a faulty presentation. All I can say is to be okay if you did a presentation like this. We live, we learn. Never give up, keep speaking.

Thanks for reading !

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A “best” presentation is not only involves best speaker and on-stage action. Best presentation mostly affected by it’s designing process. Now, how to design a “best” presentation?

1. Choose trending topic

The first thing you should really do is to choose trending (and if possible, long-lasting) presentation topic. No matter how hard you try, how fun your joke is, your presentation will be full of bullshit, and somehow boring for the audience.

And, how to choose a trending topic? I really recommend you to go to Twitter first. You can set the trending topic widget (usually at the right sidebar) either to Worldwide or localized to your area (or where your presentation will held). You will then find some topics you can choose. There will be hashtags, and sometimes, just few words without hashtag. I recommend you to choose long-lasting topic. Do not choose a topic that made to celebrate a special day, or to welcome a new album, or something like that.

2. Brainstorm your presentation and start looking for content

The next step you should do is to brainstorm your presentation. Fill your presentation with “things I want to put inside this presentation”. For more information about how to brainstorm your presentation, click here.

Then, you need to put these “things I want to put inside this presentation”. See the difference? Brainstorming means finding “things I want to put inside this presentation”, looking for content means “putting these things I want to put inside this presentation”.

3. Analyze place, time, audience, anything

To get the most of your presentation, you need to make it flexible. Present in the afternoon if the place is on a high place because there won’t be a lot supply of oxygen, and it will be too cold in the night. No matter how great you are, if you don’t plan your presentation and look for the real situation on the stage, there is chance that you’ll do a faulty presentation.

Well, analyzing doesn’t just mean analyzing things and put them on place so you’ll present well. You may find something you can use to make your presentation a lot better. For example, if the stage supports water splash or something, you can splash yourself with water and make the audience crazy. It’s fun, tough.

4. Start imagining your “special moments”

Remember that you want to make a “best” presentation, so there must be something special about it.

You can put some special things by imagining it first. Just take a time to focus about creating these special things. There may come some ideas from nowhere. It can just “pop” in your mind. These special moment are things that make your presentation becomes greater. It can be curiosity point, funny joke, mindful quote, etc.. Anything that makes the audience amazed.

5. Remember to write down your analysis and imaginations

This is somewhat unimportant step, but, if you don’t do it, you may become very regretful.

Analyzing and imagining doesn’t mean just look and think. You will think that you can remember all of your analysis results and imaginations, but really, you can’t, there will be something you’ll forget.

I really recommend you to write down all of your analysis results and imaginations. This recommendation comes from my real experience. I thought I could remember all of my analysis results and imaginations, as long as I could remember, all of them were great, and very useful for my next presentation. Yeah, but regret always comes later, right? So then, I lost some of my analysis results and imaginations, at that time, I was very regretful.

6. Start practicing

The last thing you need to remember and do is to start practicing your presentation. If you have planned your presentation well, this is the right time to start practicing it. You can face a mirror, and then speak. Notice your gesture, expression, anything. Believe that there will always be something you need to improve.

That’s 6 steps to make your best presentation. Start planning and practicing !

And, if you don’t want to miss any great presentation tips and tutorials, you can really subscribe by email at right sidebar. No spam, guaranteed.

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This is the real first step of making a presentation. You will need to brainstorm it first, finding subtopics or subtitles that will be your presentation’s core.

These subtopics are just some points or questions (both of them have same purpose) that will guide you through the presentation’s making process. They are something that remind you what you will need to explain next. And maybe, you still don’t know how to look for as many subtopics as possible to enrich your presentation. And here is how.

1. Use what, when, why, who, when, and how

Yeah, maybe this is an ancient journalistic info-seeking technique, but this works well with presentation, especially, brainstorming.

Of course the really first step you should do is to decide your main theme. Your main theme can be as small as one word (which means that it is a wide one), or it can be bigger with few words more (more specific theme). Your main theme usually related with your expertise, your class, etc..

After deciding your main theme, you should use the old and vintage and ancient (and whatever things mean similar) journalistic 5W1H technique. It can be “what is [your theme]?” and “when it was first held?” and there can be some more “when” or “what” and other W’s and H’s, like “when it was last held?”. Do not think about these W’s and H’s perfection. Just make a lot of them. We will think about finishing and polishing them in the next few steps.

2. No lose ants in “what”

When you explain your theme and write it in a note, you may notice some definitions which are not easily understandable. This is what we can call “lose ants”. These definitions must be explained. If you do not understand this yet, here is an example: “bicycle is a kind of transportation device that uses a handlebar and two gas tire”.

Can you notice the “handlebar” and “gas tire” definitions there? Believe it or not, some people may not know what handlebar or gas tire is. This will leave some lacks inside their mind. This is what we call “lose ants”, and we must do something about this. The best action you can try is to explain what handlebar and gas tire are in a short sentence, just to fill in these lacks.

Now you will notice that there are some “what”s inside your “what”s. This makes your presentation longer. This is okay, because today, you only need to brainstorm your presentation, putting as much things as you can put.

3. Explain what happened when “when”

Honestly, I have seen much presentations told a date when they reached the “when”. Well, we are talking about brainstorming presentation here. And really, we could expand this “when” than just a date.

Rather than just “20th of December, 2014”, we can really put something else. Rather than “Bicycle was invented in 1800’s”, we can expand this into something like “Bicycle was invented in 1800’s, the same century when rubber tire was invented, but not handlebar”. Make a chained related facts like this, using the same “when”. This is both important for the quantity and quality of your presentation. Based on the example above, you should notice that, beside adding presentation’s length, chained facts above explains one reason and one shocking fact about early bicycle: bicycle invented because the existence of rubber tire, but, earlier bicycle may become difficult to control because the absence of handlebar.

Making these chained facts will guarantee longer presentation. Based on how related the chained facts are, these chained facts can also improve your presentation’s overall quality.

4. There are many “why”s you can explain

“Why” is the symbol of human curiosity. Naturally, people will ask many whys.

When you give a fact to the people, they may ask you two whys. For example, if you told them “Bicycle was invented in 1800’s”, they may ask you “Why 1800’s?” and “Why it must be invented anyway?”. People like to find the cause of something. If we analogy this “something” with “effect”, and “reason” with “cause”, we can make a theory called cause-effect theory. And believe it or not, people like to know the cause more than the effect. Why? Because people can use their own imagination to conclude their own “effect” if they already knew the “cause”.

Well, your Q&A section are not long enough to answer all of whys from the people. So that’s why I suggest you to make as many why as you can, and then answer them by yourself and put the answers directly on your presentation content.

5. Tell people about “who” biographically

Most people just tell “someone invented this” when we are talking about “who”.

We really can tell something more than just a name. We can tell how he invented something, his failures, how he got the idea, etc.. But, we can tell something about him biographically, like we are making a short biography of him (or her, in case if she’s a woman).

We can tell when and where did he born, his life’s struggle, how “lucky” he was, and something else. I suggest to tell anything about him that is related to your theme. And believe it or not, it is not just about the steps on how he invented something (your theme, for example); it can be some moments in his life which motivated him to leave his failure behind and try other method, it can be his inspirational things like “hey, he was a homeless and poor man, and he invented something, why don’t you?”, it can be anything. Just make sure that this small biography does not take much time.

6. Use why in “how”; they’re close relatives

A set of facts usually attract many “why”s. Unfortunately, “how” is usually a set of facts, so you will need to do a lot of work here.

When you answer “how”s, you will notice that some steps need to be explained like “why do we need to do this?”. Yeah, it’s up to you to answer these new “why”s or not. We are talking about brainstorming and adding your presentation’s quantity as much as possible here.

For example, your answer for a how question like “how do aerodynamic helmet becomes aerodynamic?” is “it’s curved design makes wind goes around the helmet smoothly”. Then, you may realize that people may ask “why letting the wind goes around the helmet? How about letting the wind going inside the helmet and then letting it out?”. Then, you may want to answer this “why”, whether it will or will not asked by the people later. You just want to make your presentation as clear as possible.

Yeah, that’s 6 steps to brainstorm your presentation. Remember to use the old journalistic 5W 1H. Happy brainstorming!

Okay, I know this is a little bit unrelated with presentation or public speaking. But, yeah, everyone has a dream, right? And maybe I just want to write something worth reading for everyone, not just public speakers. Well, what makes you (and most people) forget dream?

1. You’re not planning about it at all

This is what most people do. Most of the time, dreams are wandering all over your head. But yeah, “wandering over” here means just something that visits and then goes. All you need to do is to stop this behavior. Pay attention to every of your idea and dream. At least you can put them on a note. Then you can take a look at them later, deciding to rather follow and build them, or to ignore them.

2. You look at what’s required to achieve that dream, and you stop

Want to be a professional footballer but don’t like it’s hard training session? You’re done, you’ll never be a professional footballer.

Whatever your excuse is, like “I don’t know how to do that”, or “I don’t have enough resources to do that”, don’t make this excuse stops you from chasing your dream and realizing your idea. Because most successful people will take a time to learn something they don’t know when they think “I don’t know how to do that”. And they will do anything to get enough resources if they think “I don’t have enough resources to do that”.

3. You only look at yourself today, not your potential

Well, most people also underestimate themselves. They think they’re not the “right person” to achieve their goals because they just look at what they can do and what they have right now. They are not thinking far enough to notice their potential, to just take a time to think about what they can do 4 months from now after learning anything required, to think about what they’ll have 4 months later when they get better job and a good increase in career. What you need to do is just to believe in yourself, specifically, about your potential.

4. You put a target, and it stresses you

“I will be a millionaire in 2 months” now this is a kind of target that will stresses you rather than motivates you.

Well, what can I really recommend about “putting target” is to make a target, then figure out how to achieve this target, and then ignore the target and it’s time limit. Now you can focus on doing things that are required to achieve the target. Just give your best to do these things, don’t mind about the target you’ve set.

5. You’re in doubt

This is a must rule for every person who want to success: never doubt something you do. Doubt is one of the biggest enemy of personal development. It’s just like when we do something, and when we’re close to the finish, we’re doubting about whether it works or not, and they we shamefully stop. We don’t know how close we are to the “finish line”, so please, never doubt something you do, there may be just one step required to reach the finish line.

That’s all from me. Just 5 reasons you must think deeply so you won’t forget any of your dream again. Well, thanks for reading !

To make your presentation sticks and remarkable, you need to make it a lot more meaningful than ever. You can use these 5 ways.

1. Make some tips from your whole presentation content

Well, I need to tell you something. People like applicable tips more than just bunch of knowledge. That’s why tips blogs like LifeHack became very famous, because they give some applicable tips and wrap them with some knowledge, rather than simply write about plain knowledge.

I’m surely sure that your presentation always has some applicable tips that need to be shared to your audience. Applicable tip here doesn’t always mean to be general tip--which people could apply into their everyday life. If your presentation tells people about something specific, like how game engine works, then you may give some tips to calculate a game engine’s effectiveness. Just take a look at your presentation content--whether it is specific or not, for genius or for stupid, your presentation content always has something applicable to share with others.

2. Tell something untold

Something untold here doesn’t mean some shocking facts or anything. It can be something which people like you specifically know. For example, if you’re a psychologist, you can share some graphology tips with people--graphology is an easy thing for psychologist, right?

It is shocking to know that something you know may not known well by people. That this “something you know” is a really specific knowledge or skill that would worth a lot if it is shared to others. Just believe that this “untold” thing is easy to find.

3. Tell something mindful and sticks

“Mindful and sticks” literally means meaningful. You can tell something that reminds people about their laziness or anything. Tell something that people would think for their whole life. And, to make this “something mindful” sticks, you can wrap it into a quote, a question, or even a graphic and tell it greatly to the people.

4. Tell others’ remarkable story

Others’ real life story is always unique, and in it’s own way, meaningful. You can tell regretful story, sad, or inspirational story to the people. Tell story that provides value, that tells people about others’ mistakes that they shouldn’t do, that tells people others’ success story that they need to follow.

5. Leave a blank in the audience’s mind

A “blank” in the audience’s mind will make them stay curious for their whole life. It can be something they ask to themselves continuously, reminding them to your presentation, which means that your presentation is meaningful. You can easily leave this “blank” by asking a remarkable and sticks question at the end of your presentation.

Okay, I think that’s all I can give for now. Thanks for reading !

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