Ask HN: Presentations, What's Your Routine? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Presentations, What's Your Routine?

5 pointsbaalimago4 comments

I'm new to the scene, but have already fallen into presenting products. I find it nervwrecking and difficult, not only because of stage fright, but also in anxiety in missing aspects of the presented product. We have a 3 week sprint schedule where it ends at a demo, and I'm the one responsible for demoing the work we've done.

What are your routines at a delivery presentation? How do you deal with presentation anxiety? How do you ensure that all aspects of the product are covered? How do you potentially fix aspects which are lost, which you forgot/missed to cover in the presentation?

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For anxiety: xanax (small dose) and beta-blocker half an hour before presenting. Also, knowing every sentence you're going to say by heart (it might require 5-10 repetitions of the whole presentation during preparation). With such preparation, it's hard to fail.

As you gradually get better at it, you might skip the drugs and do less preparation. The thing is, at least within a single job, the presentations revolve around a set of subjects and with time you will just master talking about these subjects. That's how managers do it - their jobs are pretty much mostly talking, so they get a ton of experience quickly and become very competent at presenting and discussing relevant subjects.

The routine to prepare for a sprint demo shouldn't take more than an hour or 2, involving some of the people on the team. I usually make an outline first, which corresponds to the slides and points on the slides. Then I gather people who can represent each part that we need to demo, in order to fill in the slides, and run through the demo itself. We do a dry run. The slides ensure all topics are covered. Anything missed in the demo can be communicated by email and covered next time.

The dry run helps me get used to it and lower my anxiety. If I still feel it by the end, I will practice more, and really try to imagine that it is the real event with the real folks watching me.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

Then practice again.

Many people think they can wing it because other people can wing it. The secret to their winging it is that they practiced it 100 times beforehand.

Practice.

you might consider to record the demo and then replay the recording. It might also help to make up a plan of the presentation.

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