Blog post at http://bit.ly/hGhaFK. Some people are confident public speakers, other people get nervous. Either way, you still see a lot of people breaking the most basic rules of presenting, and those presentations would be a lot better if they didn't.

1. STOP BREAKING THE BASIC OF RULES PRESENTING! With your angry Drill Sergeant @theREALwikiman

2. It’s so easy to avoid obvious mistakes when presenting. After all, the audience is on your side. So make it worth their while!

3. FACE First of all, THE FRONT!

4. For God’s sake, stop turning to face the big screen! You have a computer right in front of you – you know, the one you’re using to move your presentation materials along – so look at that instead, okay? That way people can actually HEAR you.

5. You’re reading it out, ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!

6. Don’t even get me started on this. Written prose has different phraseology, different tones, different nuances, different EVERYTHING from stuff you say out loud. If you’re reading your presentation out, IT IS AWFUL.

7. AND STOP READING OUT THE SLIDES AS WELL.

8. Slides should support what you’re saying, not duplicate it – and they certainly shouldn’t be there to provide a surrogate for good content.

9. DID THAT SLIDE HAVE SEVERAL BULLET POINTS ON?

12. The late nineties called.

14. The late nineties called.

15. THEY WANT THEIR SUCKY PRESENTATION BACK.

17. The late nineties called.

18. THEY WANT THEIR SUCKY PRESENTATION BACK.

19. Oh, and they said – don’t worry about recording that episode of Friends on your VHS player.

21. Co-presenters, you DO NOT NEED to look at each other for support and encouragement! If you’re up on stage, own the stage, and talk to your fricking audience.

22. FINISH YOUR THOUGHTS.

23. Either say something, or don’t. None of this “yeah so basically, again… yeah” rubbish. Have you even practiced this talk?

24. UM. STOP SAYING

25. Or ‘like’ or ‘sort of’ or ‘er’ – all you are doing is RUINING THE IMPACT OF YOUR WORDS. Have faith in what you’re saying.

26. STOP APOLOGISING!

27. If the audience didn’t know there was supposed to be a video there but it didn’t play, why bore them with your superfluous apology? MOVE ON.

28. DID YOU JUST WALK IN FRONT OF THE PROJECTOR?

29. Seriously?

30. I LITERALLY CANNOT BELIEVE YOU JUST WENT OVER YOUR TIME LIMIT...

31. The arrogance! The conceit! The ill-preparedness! The disrespect to the event and to the other presenters! Either make a presentation you can deliver within the allotted time, or say no to the invitation to speak...

32. Okay, that’s it. Good luck with your presentations!

33. Click to view the background image (by Nasos3) on Flickr PRESENTATION BY NED POTTER CLICK FOR MORE STUFF AT THEWIKIMAN.ORG Ned Potter, aka thewikiman, is a writer (if he ever finishes his book), a speaker (there are no guarantees he will obey all the rules in this presentation, but he will at least try) and above all, A LIBRARIAN.