Giving a presentation
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
It is a curious feature of life that every human being is, at some point in his or her life, called upon to give a presentation on a topic they are not the remotest bit interested in. If this hasn't happened to you, it will. So, don't panic, just remember the rule of thumb, which is to try and avoid doing it in the first place. There are many ways to do this, and here they are. They are listed in ascending order of effectiveness, but as the plan gets more effective, it invariably gets harder to organise.
1. Claim ignorance about the subject in question.
2. Point out the pointlessness of giving the presentation.
3. Point out that the world will continue to function in its normal manner whether or not the presentation is performed, so what's the point?
4. Claim a family illness.
5. Feign your own illness.
6. Stage your own death.
7. Hitchhike off the planet.
So supposing you've done some of the above, and failed at all the rest, and you still have to give the presentation? Well, now's the time to get to work and write the damn thing. First you need to research it, the Internet being a good place to start. But as every net user knows, finding the information you want from search engines is more than a little tricky. That link to "Everything you ever wanted to know about [PRESENTATION TOPIC]" will invariably give you a 404 Not Found message, or take you to some hard porn site.
After a while, you'll have the bare bones of a presentation which has little or no factual content, meaningless statistics, most of which you just made up, held together with the bits you got from that encyclopaedia. When you read it out loud, you realise that it *just* fills up whatever time you have been told it must not be less than. Unfortunately, this is when you are inserting several time-filling umms and aahs and speaking at a rate of about four words per minute.
So we need to lengthen it. This can be artificially done by putting random sentences of your presentation onto OHP transparencies then pretending to fiddle with the focus on the projector to buy you some time. Also, if your presentation subject isn't a particularly riveting one, you can probably get away with repeating sentences you said earlier in the presentation, just with the words rearranged, as nobody will be paying attention anyway. These techniques are widely used: next time you see someone performing a presentation, count the number of times the above tricks are employed.
Come the day of the presentation, the following things can be predicted in advance.
First Law of Presentations: The size of the audience is nearly always inversely proportional to the amount of work you have done on the presentation.
Second Law of Presentations: The proportion of people in the audience with any sense of humour will vary inversely with the number of jokes you put in.
There is, however, one constant:
Third Law of Presentations: The number of people in the audience who give a monkeys about what you are saying is almost invariably nil.
Upon delivering the presentation, never ask "Any questions?" in case someone asks one. Just say "Thank you", ring an alarm clock to wake any slumberers (which there will be), walk off, and pick up your life where you left it.
With this advice in hand, you should now be able to complete the presentation and still be able to boast a full medicine cupboard and unslashed wrists. Congratulations!
1. Claim ignorance about the subject in question.
2. Point out the pointlessness of giving the presentation.
3. Point out that the world will continue to function in its normal manner whether or not the presentation is performed, so what's the point?
4. Claim a family illness.
5. Feign your own illness.
6. Stage your own death.
7. Hitchhike off the planet.
So supposing you've done some of the above, and failed at all the rest, and you still have to give the presentation? Well, now's the time to get to work and write the damn thing. First you need to research it, the Internet being a good place to start. But as every net user knows, finding the information you want from search engines is more than a little tricky. That link to "Everything you ever wanted to know about [PRESENTATION TOPIC]" will invariably give you a 404 Not Found message, or take you to some hard porn site.
After a while, you'll have the bare bones of a presentation which has little or no factual content, meaningless statistics, most of which you just made up, held together with the bits you got from that encyclopaedia. When you read it out loud, you realise that it *just* fills up whatever time you have been told it must not be less than. Unfortunately, this is when you are inserting several time-filling umms and aahs and speaking at a rate of about four words per minute.
So we need to lengthen it. This can be artificially done by putting random sentences of your presentation onto OHP transparencies then pretending to fiddle with the focus on the projector to buy you some time. Also, if your presentation subject isn't a particularly riveting one, you can probably get away with repeating sentences you said earlier in the presentation, just with the words rearranged, as nobody will be paying attention anyway. These techniques are widely used: next time you see someone performing a presentation, count the number of times the above tricks are employed.
Come the day of the presentation, the following things can be predicted in advance.
First Law of Presentations: The size of the audience is nearly always inversely proportional to the amount of work you have done on the presentation.
Second Law of Presentations: The proportion of people in the audience with any sense of humour will vary inversely with the number of jokes you put in.
There is, however, one constant:
Third Law of Presentations: The number of people in the audience who give a monkeys about what you are saying is almost invariably nil.
Upon delivering the presentation, never ask "Any questions?" in case someone asks one. Just say "Thank you", ring an alarm clock to wake any slumberers (which there will be), walk off, and pick up your life where you left it.
With this advice in hand, you should now be able to complete the presentation and still be able to boast a full medicine cupboard and unslashed wrists. Congratulations!
