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Today was my presentation and in fact I write this post just three hours after my presentation was completed and over with. I had felt a boulder growing in my stomach all week and I barely could swallow as people filled the room, there was a total of nearly fifty people in the room. I was introduced by a Computer Associates speaker and as I walked up to the front of the presentation I peered over the crowd and my mind became steady.
I just started speaking and speaking and speaking, it was as if I pressed play on a DVD player and I just spoke and went through my material with the precision of a well oiled machine. I spoke at an appropriate pace, I allowed questions and answered almost a dozen during the presentation and I actually filled up my one hour presentation so quickly that I barely got through all of my material. I did manage to though and all of it was presented as good as I could have presented it.
When the presentation was ended nearly fifteen people came over to ask further questions and swap business cards, I had emails and pages from people over the next hour telling me that my presentation was one of the best ones they have seen all week and in fact the last two years at CA World some have said. My topic was very technical which was what this event had been lacking previously.
My boss was very pleased and there were only two constructive criticisms from my presentation which I will take with me and learn from. The first is when people ask questions, I had forgotten to repeat or adlib the question loud enough for the rest of the audience to hear. The second was I spent too much time looking at one half of the room and did not equalize my attention to both sides of the room enough. This was due to me having to stand on the left side of the room so the projector wouldn’t be blocked by my body, but was duly noted.
I am now very relieved and feel I have crossed another milestone in my career and that is being a presenter at a major trade show. My life experience is richer as a result, and even though I stressed, vomited, worried and was miserable for the previous days I am glad that I have done this. I represented myself well, my knowledge well and I represented my company well.
Thanks for all your encouraging words and support to my blog fans and my twitter friends.
-Justin Germino