giving a presentation
The Five Minute Presentation

photo of stopwatchYou may ask:"How can I get anything across in a 5 minute presentation?" – Only five minutes? It is not as daunting as it seems.

Advertisers can get a complete story across in less than 30 seconds so five minutes should be fine.

The structure could be something as follows:

  1. Introduce yourself. Ideally with a slide with your name on.
  2. Start with an attention grabber. I love to use a funny story.
  3. Make one main point in the presentation and use a few visual slides to illustrate it.
  4. Try to break this point down into a list of three main concepts and present them on a single slide. See the section on the rule of three for more details.
  5. End on a high point. The psychological technique of recency suggests that this will be what people remember most.
If you can add an element of suspense, so much the better.