Never assume that your audience knows the technical terminology. From the start, we asked our audience to request clarification if they needed it. These practice sessions also allowed us to gain greater self-confidence in public speaking. As for our colleagues, since not all of them have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the Internet on the job, they appreciated the knowledge they gained in these sessions. The larger the print, the easier it was to follow our speaking notes throughout the presentations, especially since our eyes had to jump from the keyboard to the overhead screen to our notes.
Evaluation is valuable.
As the seminars progressed, we were able to incorporate suggestions from the evaluation sheets. For example, our presentation notes were posted at an internal Web site. In general, feedback on the evaluation sheets was extremely positive. There were a few negative comments, which we took into consideration. However, we became seriously concerned only when we saw the same criticism showing up on more than one evaluation sheet.