How effective are your presentations? Do people seem captured by your words, data, and graphics? Do they look at you and your slides with intense interest? Do they come to you after the presentation commending you and asking for more on the subject? Perhaps that level of presentation success happens only once in a long while. People say that most presentations are boring and ineffective. How can you make yours more interesting and influential? Here are the techniques that work best:

1. Know your subject:
The one element that can make your presentation much easier on you and more influential to your audience is your mastery of the subject. Practices giving a presentation on your topic until you are confident that you know your topic inside out without having to look at slides or notes.

2. Speak to your audience’s interest:
It’s amazing how many presenters stand up and start talking about their project, their ideas, their product, as it what is of interest to them is also of interest to their audience. Follow the WIFM concept (What’s In It Form Me?) Tell your audience at the outset how what you will be talking about is going to benefit them.

3. Speak the language of your listeners:
A key concept in effective communication is to speak in the language of your listener. This means that you must not speak in your own preferred language, style, and point of view. If you want to be effective, you must make sure that you reach the audience by adopting their language, their style, their way of seeing things, and their level of comprehension. If you don’t reach them, you don’t influence them.

4. Talk to group one person at a time:
Don’t look in the outer space. Look at your audience one at a time. Spend a few seconds looking in the eyes of each person sitting in front of you, then move slowly to the next. This way each person will feel that you are talking to him or her personally.

5. Make it personal.
Make it human: Even if your presentation is technical, make it as human as you can. You make your presentation human by making it personal. Talk about your personal experience. Describe how you felt when. Be vulnerable. Be authentic. By funny, without necessarily telling jokes. Be natural. Be human.

6. Engage your audience:
Communication is a two way street. Avoid giving one-way speeches. Fill your presentations with questions that require your audiences’ answers. Use quizzes to intrigue them. Ask those who have similar experiences to raise their hands. Get them involved. If you have time, give them time to speak and present their view points.

7. Perform:
Being natural and authentic does not mean you stand up there whispering in your normal voice. If you are presenting then you are on stage. You must perform. You need to raise your voice, move, waive your hands. You are the center of attention and the focal point of your audience. Don’t let them sleep in their seats. Your movements, voice, and body language should all be dynamic enough to keep your audience awake and interested.

President-elect Barack Obama had finally crossed over the election campaigns project stress on 4th November 2008. The President Election project is going to complete soon. He had just crossed over 1 big election milestone.
He is the first African-American President for United States of America.

Although he is the elected President, however he will be facing with another set of stress soon. What will be the strategies in fulfilling his promises? President Obama will have to sit down and plan his change strategies carefully so that the reforms could carried out smoothly. How President Obama going to confront the economic and military enormity. It will be another project stress for him to clear. He may want to view it as a project and clear various stresses as it comes along.

If you have a big presentation project to do in the next few weeks, there isn’t a whole lot you can do to improve your speaking skill. At this point you just need to make sure you deliver the presentation to the best of your current ability. Nervousness and mental stress can interfere with that delivery, so here are some tips for conquering your fears & stress in the short-term:

1. They won’t notice
I’ve listened to speeches where speakers told everyone how nervous they were. Until that moment, I had no idea they were nervous and I’m sure nobody else noticed either. Think of any nervousness, stress you feel as being your private secret and most of the time it will be.

2. Rehearse like a maniac
When I have an important presentation project, I memorize the key sections word for word. I practice in front of a mirror several times before I go on stage. Rehearsal is extremely important because it will keep you from forgetting your lines in a panic. Unnecessary stress is minimized.

3. Unfreeze the audience with humor
If the situation allows it and you are funny in conversations, try starting with a joke or a bit of humor. If you can start the audience laughing before getting into more serious matters, that will dissolve much of your fright. I wouldn’t use humor if I didn’t feel comfortable with it, so don’t push the jokes if it doesn’t feel natural to do so.

4. Look good
I am certainly not going to become a male model overnight, but staying groomed and dressing somewhat more formally than the rest of the audience can do wonders to boost your confidence. Worrying about being under-dressed or not having shaved that morning can make any stage fright worse.

5. Scope out the environment
Come to your presentation room a day before and look around. Where will people be sitting? What potential problems might come up for speaking or displaying information? Be comfortable in the room you are about to speak in.

6. Talk to the audience
If you don’t know your audience already, have a chat with a few members before you speak. This can give you a bit of extra familiarity with the audience by knowing you have a few acquaintances in the crowd of strangers. Thus speaking stress will be reduced to the minimal.

7. Memorize the sticky spots
During your rehearsal, there will probably be one or two places that you trip over. Reword and memorize these sections so they don’t drag you down during your final speech.

8. Accept the fear, don’t fight it
The worst thing you can do when you’re nervous and stress are to notice your own anxiety and start worrying about that too. Just accept any nervousness you feel just as you would accept that the carpet is blue or the walls are white. Trying to force yourself to calm down or hide signs of nervousness can backfire and make your problem worse.