How to remember your presentation without using the PowerPoint slides as notes

How will you remember your presentation? How will you remember what to say? How will you remember what comes next? “Use the slides.” No way! There are too many reasons why this is not a great idea.
 
What you stand to lose by using slides as notes:
 
You will lose the power to connect with your audience. Looking at the slides and the screen means you are not maintaining eye contact or connection with your audience. You also lose your spontaneous interaction with them by reading the slides and not your audience.

You will lose the power of design in your slides. Instead of having the chance to be one powerful point that reinforces your message, each slide will descend into being simple reminders to you or a mass of text.
 
You will lose the power of your message. If you say the same thing as your slide each weakens the other. Your audience is divided between listening to you and reading the slide. No audience is so stupid as to need the material presented to them in exactly the same form twice ( we all need reinforcement, but preferably in more subtle ways than that.)

Your audience will question your confidence in your subject, and your personality cannot shine through.
 
Other ways to remember:
 
Use the structure of your speech. You will have distilled your message to one sentence when you were preparing the presentation. If necessary, return to that sentence and then expand and in the process you can return to the point you were making. You will also have decided on the best structure for presenting your information – maybe chronological, or from strongest point to weakest, or pros and cons – whatever it was it can be a guide to you to work through as you present.

Use your senses when preparing. Use visualisation. As you practice, visualize the speech and how you are presenting. Visualise audience response. Visualise yourself moving and speaking and using the slides. Then when you present, move through the pictures in your mind that you created. Or use the audio sense. Or use notes when you present – the structure of the speech – main points, subheadings and when you present you can return to the picture of that page or those notes. If you an audio person, listen to yourself as you practice. Listen to the pauses, to the introductory phrases, to the quotations and power words. Then as you present, you can listen to the recordings in your head that you ran as you practiced and use them as prompts.

Use notes. Either use the Notes View in your presentation software or create a set of paper notes. Practise with the notes. Place them where you can use them – on the podium, behind a chair, in your coat pocket, on the desk next to the computer, but use them confidently. Have them organised so that they work seamlessly.
 
Then you can put all of your attention into your presentation. You can focus on your audience, on your message and on the energy and passion of your presentation. You will not be focusing on your slides, and you won’t need to use them to remember what comes next!

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(c) Bronwyn Ritchie
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Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer.
She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk , a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. Boost your public speaking success with Bronwyn’s FREE 30 speaking tips. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com