- Yooo! What's up? It's Patrick from Guy in a Cube. And people often ask me, "Hey, Patrick, can you give
me some tips on presenting, or can you sit in my session and then provide some feedback?" So, I decided to do a video to share my top five speaking tips. Stay tuned.
(lips popping) (gentle upbeat music) If you find this for the very first time, be sure to hit that subscribe button to stay up to date on all the videos, both Adam and this guy. All right, speaking. I love to give presentations, especially in person presentations. You know, this new world, this world that we're living in now, everything is remote, and I'm kinda struggling, all right? I like to do the YouTube videos, but I miss the interaction. A lot of times when I
was speaking in person, even now, remote, people will ask me or
come up to me and go, "Patrick, it seems like you're pretty good at this presentation things, what are some of your top tips that you would give presenters?" And so I decided to do a video, so let me give you my top five things. You guys know what I like to do. Let's do what? Let's, wait. There's no laptop in this video. This is a non-tech video. This is probably my first non-tech video. Anyway, anyway, enough
of all this talking. Let's just get into this, okay? So number one, most important thing, if you're gonna do a presentation and you're showing some code, and you're trying to show
people things on the screen, to help your audience out,
use a tool like ZoomIt. If you open up your favorite
search engine which is Bing, type in ZoomIt. You can download it for
free, it's for free, and learn how to use it. Ctrl + 1 zooms in to the screen. Or use some tool like it, some
piece of software like it. There's tons of them out there. There's a magnifier on
your PC that you can use. So just help your audience
out and zoom in on the code. Zoom in on the section of the screen that you're trying to show them. I promise you, they will appreciate it. And if you watched our live
stream, you probably hear Adam, "I can't see it, it's too small. Patrick, can you zoom in?" I mean, that's what he
says every time, all right? Use some tool like ZoomIt. Number two, if you use slides, do not write paragraphs in your slides. You know, like line of the line of the line of the line of the line. Don't kill us with the PowerPoint. Don't put in all of these paragraphs and then turn around and read the slides. Are you kidding me? Just put the talking points in your slides and use those talking points so you can keep pace or at least know what
you're gonna talk about. But if you wanna put those
paragraphs, use the note section. In your slides, only put the major things
that people need to grasp. When that slide is up on the screen, don't give me paragraphs of it 'cause I'm probably gonna
get up and just walk away. Number three, if you try
and you don't succeed, don't give up. You give your first presentation, it doesn't go that great, it's okay. If you go back and watch
some of the first videos that I did Guy in a Cube, oh, they were awful. I won't even watch it. Adam and I won't go back
and watch the earlier videos 'cause they are some of the worst things I've ever seen in my life. But I didn't quit. Talk to Adam, talk to other people that
gave me some feedback and the videos kept
getting better and better. And you guys like them, I think you like them. But if you don't, let me
know in the comments below. (Patrick laughs) Anyway, if you don't
succeed the first time, if you think it's awful the first time, talk to some people, get some advice, make the presentation better
the next time, all right? Number four, you guys have
been watching this video, what do you notice about this video? My personality. Show your personality
in your presentation. If you meet me in person,
you're meeting this guy, the guy that you see in the video. For everyone that's met me, they probably go, "Yup, yup. He's the same person in person." I hate the presenter that gets up there and they presented as this, "We're gonna talk about DAX today. The first thing you need
to know about DAX... Are you kidding me? DAX is so exciting. Power BI is so exciting. Data warehouse is so exciting. Show people how excited you are about it. Let them see your personality. Number five, engage your audience. Look at me, I'm going back and
forth, going back and forth. You know, one thing that I
like to do when I present, I always get to my presentation early, and then I go out in the audience and I look for people that I don't know, and I walk up to him
and I introduce myself. And I go, "Hey, my name is Patrick. What's your name?" A lot of times people
go, "Patrick, I know you. We met such and such," and I'm a little embarrassed, but "Hey, well, you know," then I'll remember him next time. So try to engage your audience, make some time after the
presentation if you can. You don't have to finish your presentation and then phew, you're out. Take some time to get
to know your audience and let them get to know you, right? You wanna be a very approachable person. You never know the
connection you're gonna make. This is how I got on Guy in a Cube. I met Adam because we were
somewhere at some presentation. He and I started chatting, and before you know it, we're
like besties now, all right? Okay, so before I go, I'm
wanna give you one bonus tip. Do some prep. If you're gonna show some
demos, practice your demos. If you're gonna go through
some PowerPoint slide, practice your PowerPoint slide. Patrick, why isn't this
one of your top five? 'Cause often, Adam and I don't do it. We don't prep. Imagine if we did prep, how much better our presentations will be? Adam and I talk about this a lot. You should do some preparation
for your presentation. Some people have to memorize
their entire presentation. All right, what do you guys think? What are your top presentation tips? I love to know. Post them where? In the comments below. If it's your first time
visiting Guy in a Cube channel, hit that subscribe button. If you like my video, big thumbs up. As always, from Adam and
myself, thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next video.
