Week 9- Pitching & Presenting

Today in class we had a lecture on pitching and presenting, this lecture is to help us for when we will be pitching our own digital product idea. The lecture was helpful and we got some good tips and tricks to help us present the best pitch possible to sell our product.

To start every presentation should involve 3 things; a story, planning and be prepared.

To start your presentation needs to have a story; a good story involves a beginning, middle and end.

Beginning- Introduction to the project and an overview of what you’re going to cover.

The beginning is the most important and should tell people where they are going

Middle- This should be your project content

The middle is where you tell the story, it should have structure.

End- This is the summary of what you just covered in the presentation

The end is the climax to the story, it is a summary and conclusion to what the middle content was

Planning

You need to plan the narrative; what is going to be covered, the story, what is going to be said as well as understanding what type of feel and atmosphere you want to create with the presentation.

In simple terms the presentation should:

1. Say what you’re going to say
2. Say it
3. Say it again

You should prepare a rough cut of your presentation starting with sketches and a storyboard this helps you structure the presentation and make the best story for your audience.

You should know and understand what you’re talking about as well as knowing your audience and make the presentation fit to their needs and language.

To make sure you fit everything in for the given time limit you need to practice, practice, practice this ensures you cover everything you want to and don’t go over your time.

Creating the presentation:

• Lay out what you intend to cover or alternatively just get straight to the point
• Hand out supporting materials at the end to try and avoid any distractions.
• Line up images and text, use grids if you need to
• Visualise as much as you can, don’t use a lot of words and paragraphs
• Use rhetorical techniques such as alliteration, hyperbole and rhetorical questions
• Investor pitch includes: vision, problem, solution, market, team and ‘the ask’
• Keep it interesting

Delivering the presentation 

• Try and speak clearly and slowly so the audience can understand everything that you are saying
• Show enthusiasm
• Own the stage
• Consider personal appearance
• Introduce yourself
• Have cards with bullet points if you need to
• Use your hands to express yourself
• Practice makes perfect
• Be prepared

When delivering the presentation and all the listeners are sitting scattered about you have the power to ask them to sit together, you command the room you can make them sit together. This will be easier to deliver the presentation more effectively as you can make better eye contact and engage the listeners. Especially if it is an investor pitch you will want the listeners as engaged as possible.