How to Give an Awesome Presentation

First, don't screw up:

Bring different formats of your presentation on different media. I had my presentation in PowerPoint and PDF, on both my laptop and a flash drive. I also had a physical printout of my notes.

Practice a lot. I ran through my presentation all the way through eight times. That included twice the day before and once the morning before I presented.

Arrive 15 minutes early to set up. Let me repeat that: Arrive 15 minutes early. This will prompt the previous presenter to finish up, gather his or her materials, disconnect from the presentation equipment, etc. You'll need a few minutes to hook into the presentation equipment even if everything goes well. If it doesn't, you'll need another 5 or 10 minutes. If you have extra time, see below.

Second, a few positive suggestions:

Use visuals. Replace all the words in your slide show with photographs and artwork. Your audience will remember four slides, each with a full-screen photo, better than a single slide with four bullet points. Where that's impossible, use single words or short phrases. My 30-minute presentation takes up 80 MB and uses six words (plus the "Thank You" slide).

Add humor. If your presentation doesn't have any, find a way to work it in (but integrate it). I found myself using the word "model" several times, so at each of those points in the presentation, I inserted a slide of a model kit of a girl wearing a bikini. I'd say "model," pull up that slide, then say "Not that kind of a model." Completely superfluous to the content, but it kept the audience engaged and guessing what they'd see next.

Stand up and walk around. At least stand. When humans sit, they relax. When they stand, they gather up energy. Standing presentations are much more energetic than sitting ones.

Tell stories. Since you arrive early, you may have an extra 5 minutes or so before the presentation begins. Warm up your audience with a tangential story, ideally one that relates to the topic. There's probably something about your subject that you couldn't include. Tell that story now.

Throughout the presentation, use stories wherever possible. We are hard-wired to engage with any story we hear, at least initially. During my presentation, I paused to recap a particularly dark episode of an anime. When I finished, I got a round of applause (to my surprise).

What are your tips?