Talking to Myself
I have a love-hate relationship with presenting. I feel I’m fair-to-decent at delivering an ad-libbed presentation backed up by a loosely structured slide deck. I can project a decent amount of confidence even though I’m nervous and hate being the centre of attention, and can talk at length if I can control the timing of the presentation.
Unfortunately, this is one of those times where the timing is out of my hands and the format is fairly set. As I mentioned, I have a strict 15 minute limit, and there’s also a template I need to start from - although there is creative freedom allowed within the parameters of the template. Keeping to the time limit remains my biggest hurdle. I have a lot I need to cover, and nerves tend to make me throw in little extra bits of information as I’m talking. Because I know this I have spent a lot of time practicing my delivery since my first disastrous attempt.
As well as having multiple review + feedback sessions with colleagues, I’ve spent every spare minute repeating the script over and over - both in my head and out loud. I’m still struggling to hit the 15 minute mark, but I’m really, really, close. I’ve come in under time in a few practice runs so it seems to depend on how much detail I give to one or two areas of the slide deck. My thinking is that if I can memorise a version which comes in under time, and stick to only that in the real thing, then I should be OK.
As far as the slides go, these are now set. I’ve had some great feedback on the visuals, which is a nice boost. The deck needs to be sent off to the panel by the end of today, so there’s no more time to make any substantive changes - probably for the best! I won’t be able to post the full deck, but I will leave you with a small extract from the “about me” slide:
A snippet from my draft presentation