Spacehamster’s Blog

I’ve never considered myself all that great at presentations. I can speak clearly, but I don’t have that innate ability to judge audience reaction - something that all great speakers have in abundance. So it’s with some trepidation that I agreed to do a presentation on a web application for IT Development that I’ve been working on for the past three months.

I’m doubly nervous, because this is the first web-application I’ve ever worked on. So I’ve done my best to temper everyone’s expectations - “We need feedback from the other IT Developers”, “The final product will look very different from this depending on everyone else’s feedback”. I’ve found that presentation and layout aren’t my initial strongsuits. I have a tendency to focus on getting the backend functionality right first, before focusing on the front-end appearance. My rationale is there’s not much point in having a pretty-looking interface if your program is blowing up in your face once every ten seconds.

Yes, it’s only a very brief presentation for colleagues, and will probably go for ten (hopefully short) minutes. But that still doesn’t stop me from feeling a serious case of stagefright. I put on my resume application for this job that I have good communication skills - more than ever I believe this to be absolutely true for real-life client and colleague interactions.

But a presentation? That’s a whole new ballgame.