How to Begin a PowerPoint Presentation by saying Thank You

How do you thank people before a presentation – they could be your peers, family members, friends or even your boss.

Now most people would do an Oscar-acceptance style speech just before the presentation but Seth offers a much better advice – he suggests creating a photo slide-show of people and run them in a loop while the audience are still looking for their seats.

Thus you won’t waste any of your valuable presentation time but still get an opportunity of saying thanks.

“Prepare for the talk by taking pictures of each person. Then, create a new presentation. Put each photo on its own slide, preferably with a well designed ID below it (it should be on a black box, with a nice sans serif font reversed out. Like you see on cable TV news.)

String one after the other. Build a dissolve transition between each one. Program it to put up a new slide every two seconds–don’t go too slow!–and to loop the presentation.

Ten minutes before you’re due to start, while everyone is finding their seats, run the presentation. It’ll cycle 5 or 10 times before you start speaking. When you get up, start your presentation and just dive into the meaty stuff.”