#Things to consider

  1. Make sure that you have the opening—that first 30–60 seconds—memorized. You need to deliver that part with full confidence and passion.
  2. You need to be able to deliver the first 60 seconds without any “umms” or pauses and without looking at your notes. After that amount of practice, it’s a question of how much of the rest of the talk you want to be able to give that smoothly.
  3. People can hold three or four things in working memory as long as they aren’t distracted and as long as their processing of the information is not interfered with.
  4. Every 10 minutes, make sure you do something different, like take a mini-break or tell a story, exercise, or interact, ask the audience a question, move to a different location, or change the topic.
  5. Know what to call slides with a lot of text on them? Your notes! If you feel you need slides with text, it’s probably because you need notes. Don’t show the audience your notes.