Dos and Don'ts for the Presentation

Be professional. Imagine making a presentation to your manager or other executives of your future workplace. Try to follow the following points.

• Be clear and concise. There are no bonus points for having a lot of slides.
• Dress professionally. No jeans, t-shirts, open toed sandals.
• Use the powerpoint, but minimize animation, unless you really need it. Hitting enter everytime to display the next line on the slide is irritating. Flying phrases, flying question marks, flying exclamation points show immaturity. So does incorrect english.
• Practice your presentation, in front of the mirror and with your teammates. Be sure about your role in the presentation.
• Don't read off what is written on the slide. Turning around to read what is displayed out loud tells me you have no idea what you are saying. Learn what is on the slide you have to talk about, and explain it in your own words.
• Make sure your equipment is working, in case you are doing a live demo.
• Don't spend too much time on extra niceties like thanking me, HOD, Director, Principal, fellow classmates, assorted teachers, the Sun, the Moon, the Trees, etc. Basically don't waste my time or your own time.
• Assume technical knowledge of your audience, but don't delve too deeply in the implementation. Basically, don't start a code walkthrough!
• Use a simple colour scheme, don't get too creative with that. Light font on dark background.
• Be passionate, be funny, be creative.

Following should be the rough outline of what you should cover in the presentation:

• Project synopsis, mission statement, scope, etc.
• Enumerate and illustrate the project lifecycle decisions you made.
• Process model, requirements, system design.
• Demo running code.
• What does the future hold for this project?

This should cover about 15 minutes, while I'll ask questions for about 5 minutes. I would ask questions during the presentation instead of at the end as is the general practice.

Good luck! I'll see you soon.