Chapter 8. Planning and Creating Great Presentations

Communication takes many forms, from smoke signals to Web pages; from rude gesture to polished oratory; from an order at the drive-through to a speech at the podium or pulpit. And whether you're a Great Communicator or a first-time speaker, what you're really doing in any of these instances is making a presentation : you're delivering information to others to get your point across.

Keynote's a great tool to help you make presentations. But it's only a tool. Before you even boot up your computer, it's worth spending some time thinking about what the goal of your presentation is (convince Mom and Dad to let you go away to camp; convince Junior that camp would be good for him) and who your audience is.

To succeed, your presentation has to hit the audience where they live, where they work, in the way they think, and in the way they believeor, as a wise man once said, "You scratch 'em where they itch." That's what the first few parts of this chapter cover; the last section deals with presentation nuts and boltspicking out laptops, projectors, and so on.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking the computer presentation is the star of the showit's not. You are the star of the show. Keynote, your handouts, the special guests you've invited, and your sharp new suit are all playing supporting roles.

If you're a regular, award-winning member of the dinner-speech circuit and you've just bought this book to learn how to use Pages and Keynote, then by all means skip ahead to the last section of this chapter to read about presentation hardware, and to Chapter 9 to learn the ins and outs of Keynote. But if you're like most mortalssometimes you give great presentations; sometimes you bombor if you've never given a presentation, this chapter's loaded with advice that can help you plan, prepare for, and deliver your pitch.