How I make my presentations

Professor Ananth: The floor is open for questions
Pankaj(my super senior):This is not related to the topic you spoke about but I still would like to ask you.
 How do you speak so well?
Professor Ananth(amused and laughing): A cockroach gets very curious about how a centipede
moves around with so many legs(100). One day the cockroach meets a centipede and asks how it decides which one has to be moved at any point of time. The centipede who never thought about it, gets curious and tries to figure out how it actually moves. It tries to figure out and gets totally confused and stops trying to do that.

source: pankaj- I did not attend this talk. Pankaj was the hostel affairs secretary of IIT Madras when I was
 in second year. He is the only IITian who never dressed like an IITian

Professor Ananth's point was that it developed naturally. While there is some merit to what he said it was not
entirely natural for me.

Rash: You are right. Thats exactly what I do.
Me: what do you mean?
Rash: Its not just you who likes to listen to stories. Its good that you admit it but everybody likes it whether
they admit or not
Me: hmmm. Thats interesting so you use it to get their attention.
Rash: yup. Thats when I start selling.

Rash does not live on my stomach. Rash is the name of my senior which expands to Ravi Shanker. I had amazing
 conversations with him around mess tables in cauvery. You can like him or hate him but you cannot ignore him. He is working in some ad company silently planning to take over it.

The point is that stories get attention whether you like it or not. For instance one of the reasons why most of you like my blog is because I embed stories in it. This is the only thing I learnt consciously.

It is more difficult for us to write about things which come naturally than those which we develop consciously.
Before you get interested in incorporating humor in your presentation first decide whether it would be appropriate to have it in the presentation. If it is not appropriate use it with caution. For instance I would not make fun in presentations made to prof.Idichandy.

The humor sort of came naturally. But there is definitely one common element in all the ways humor is
created - surprise. You just have to surprise the audience by saying or doing something.

Pay FULL attention to what you are about to read. I usually charge 10,000 bucks per session to teach this stuff-TEN THOUSAND BUCKS. ok! Thats a complete lie but this stuff really worked for me.

1. Make an unbelievable lie and give a moment for them to absorb it. Tell them immediately that you lied! I tried it in the previous statement I dont know if it worked. This definitely works for me when I speak. Let me know if it worked:)

2. Tell/ask them something which seems totally unrelated. Then go ahead and relate it to what ever is relevant
to the topic.I was recently asked to make a presentation on how the competition happened. I started with "Do you guys like science fiction movies?"

3. The last one I know is called common enemy. You can see this in Steve Jobs' presentation. He usually uses
against windows(Microsoft). You sit and laugh with him even though the computer on which you are listening to his presentation is windows. If you are from IIT Madras you can see Shaastra guys using saarang as their enemy to have have fun in their presentations.

Thats all I could recall. If you use something else and you are aware of it let me know by commenting

Escape routes:
Usually most presentations end with Q and A sessions. One of the things which I dreaded most in my second year was "How would I look if I did not know the answer of a question which is asked?"

Firstly, No body bothers if you just say "I dont know. I will find out and let you know."
I do it a little differently. Usually if it is a question asking for more information I would just say I dont know
if I did not know

If it is a question on logic or something which needs thought and I dont know the answer. I dont like to say that I dont know. I hardly encounter such questions because I am usually sound in what I learn. I myself ask too many questions when I learn stuff :)

When I dont know the answer to such questions I throw it back at the audience. I would say "Now, thats a good question (obviously  because you could not asnwer it). Since you have listened to all I talked about why dont you guys figure out the answer. It would really give a lot of satisfaction to me if you could answer. If you cannot figure out answer just send me a mail I will reply to your question." If some one answers its solved, if not you just escaped :) I used it only once when I was giving a talk in Anna university.

Nothing is complete wihtout talking about powerpoint slides. Its best if you could just keep it as
bullets with not more than 6 words in each point. If its too much information just make it visual. I am not
great at this. Actually I almost suck at this. I usually get away with it because my talk usually is interesting.

coming up next is "what can you do if you have a tough nut to crack in your review panel?" . I will not title it that way because there are profs on my gtalk list :)