Get organized.

Before you begin, outline your thoughts, organize the natural flow, consider your audience, and research and collect supporting documents. As you create your presentation, consider your goals and ensure you meet those objectives.

Know who your intended audience is and who else might be in your audience.

How compelling is your content.  The title of your session alone could attract your audience members in person or virtually. Does your bio edify you as a credible speaker?  What about the person introducing you?  Can they sing your praises as you make your way to the lectern?  Your presentation should be designed where the audience walks away with a nugget of information that is memorable.  How are they affected or effected as they depart from your session.  Is your presentation so compelling that they want to attend your next session.  Provide value by designing your content to meet their needs.  

Time yourself

Rehearse and practice your content.  Know the allotted time for when you deliver your presentation.  If you're given an hour, allow 5-10 minutes for questions and answers.  Allow yourself time to disengage from the forum.  You'll want to be considerate of the time allowed for the next presenter to set up the conference for their presentation.

Think about the types of questions you may receive.

Have a focus group review your presentation and have them derive questions that may be typical of what an audience member may ask.  Remember, you're the authority of the subject matter presented.  Know the content and solution for that inquiry.

Preparing Your Presentation

Ensure your slides, media, handouts, and everything else are accessible.
W3c WAI has an information page, Making Events Accessible: Checklist for meetings, conferences, training, and presentations that are remote/virtual, in-person, or hybrid that provides tips and instructions on making materials, slides and overall presentations accessible. This is a great resource, so check it out to make your session inclusive to your audience. You may also find these articles helpful:

• Microsoft: Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities.

• Adobe PDF Accessibility Overview

• Apple: Create accessible documents, spreadsheets, or presentations with Pages, Numbers, or Keynote

• Prezi: Creating accessible content in Prezi Design

Have the equipment you need

Are you presenting with a notebook, iPad or laptop?  Make sure you're carrying the right connector for a projector (with VGA and HDMI), widescreen (16:9) projection screen, microphone, mini-jack (1/8” stereo jack) audio patch, and sound mixer and speakers. Back up your content on a USB thumb drive.  Send your presentation to a colleague, email it to a conference coordinator, place it on a web page.
Make sure you test all of the respective cables before you arrive at your conference.  Lightning cables, HDMI, VGA, dongles, audio cables with XLR male/female adapters, male 3.5 mm jack to XLR connector, 3.5mm jack to phono plug.  Prepare for every contingency.  What type of presentation tool should you use to advance your slides?  Simple, the one that you're familiar with!  What about microphones?  I recommend a headphone microphone with a hand microphone for back up.  Lavalier microphones are good but suffer from audio drop-off.  Wireless vs wired microphone microphones?  It depends on the location.  Best case scenario is to do a rehearsal and test before your event.

Delivering Your Presentation

Know where your session room is

Do a drive-by of the location where you'll be speaking.  Check out the acoustics, size of the screen(s), seating capacity.  Know how long it will take you to get to the location.  Allow yourself time to set up your equipment before the audience shows up.

Arrive early to set up.

Are there speakers before you or after you?  Know your start time and end time.

Have a way to track your time

Make sure you have a countdown timer to gauge speaking time and availability.  If you have a companion have them hold up a flash or cue card indicating time remaining.  It's embarrassing and unprofessional is if you think you're in the middle of the session and the conference coordinator abruptly ends your session because you've run out of time.  Pace yourself and rehearse.

Ensure you are presenting in a way that is accessible to your audience.

Account for everyone in the audience.  They may be diverse, and you want to include the entire room by ensuring your video has contrast, audio is loud enough to be heard, captioning is provided.  Describe your images on screen for those that may be visually challenged.  Give your audience members time to absorb your content.  Don't race through each slide. Do you need sign language interpreters available; do you have open or closed captioning.  Is there contrast on your slides for those who may have visibility issues?

Sharing information and making your presentation available

Share your contact information verbally.  Have a QR code that leads to your website.  Have links on each of your presentation slides so audience members may reach out to you.  If you have a way to send your presentation before the event, send it out to the coordinator or email it directly to the attendee list.

Visually Impaired

If you have a visual impairment, you may absolutely communicate with the audience.  Someone from the conference may identify the lectern & the speaking area. Although you may not be able to see the audience they will see you.  You can engage the audience by using your body language to express a point, moving your head towards different areas of the facility, use your volume and inflection when addressing the audience. Projecting your voice is a great tool to engage with your audience.

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