Steps to becoming an effective presenter include:

1. Practise

The more familiar you are with your material the more you will be able to inspire your audience’s trust and confidence. Do more than practise reading through your material to yourself. If possible, stand up in a room and deliver your presentation to the walls. Get used to hearing your own voice filling a room. Familiarise yourself with the words and phrases in your presentation. Play around with different volumes and see how well you can hear your own voice. Above all, familiarise yourself with the main thrust of your argument and explore how the individual elements of your presentation piece together. This will help you to keep to your chosen objectives and avoid distractions when it comes to your actual delivery.

2. Assert yourself

An effective presenter needs to be assertive, not aggressive. There are two important Ps.

Posture

It is important to appear confident at all times. Different postures create different moods. A very formal, upright and still posture will create a very different atmosphere from a relaxed and active one. Remember to match your physical behaviour to the objectives underpinning your presentation. If you want to be either formal or informal, make deliberate choices about your physical style and stick to these.

Presence

Have the confidence to fill your space in front of an audience. Avoid apologising for your presence by saying “sorry” (although you must be polite if circumstances so demand— e.g. the session is running over time, or the microphone has stopped working). Also, avoid physical apologies by hiding behind a desk or lectern. You must be confident that the audience wants to listen and that you have something interesting to tell them. Don’t be afraid to wait for an audience to settle down before you start speaking or to ask for quiet if this does not happen.

3. Make contact with your audience

One of the key challenges faced by the presenter is to establish links with her/his audience (a poor presenter appears to be speaking to an empty room). Making contact helps to maintain an audience's interest and encourages them to believe that you are genuinely interested in talking to them. You can make contact with your audience in a number of ways, including:

eye contact;

gestures;

spoken contact;

your use of language.

4. Use your voice

Your voice is a very flexible and powerful tool. You can use it in many different ways by varying the: volume; pace; pitch.

5. Breathe

Always remember to breath steadily and deeply. If you are anxious about making a presentation your breathing will become fast and shallow. This will affect the quality of your voice and your ability to speak clearly for extended periods of time. Try to take a few deep breaths before you make your presentation, making a conscious effort to slow your breathing down and taking in more air with each breath. During your presentation, use pauses after questions or at the end of sections to allow comfortable breathing patterns. Don’t be afraid to slow down the pace of your presentation if your breathing becomes uncomfortable.

6. Drink

It is a good idea to have some liquid to hand to quench your thirst if you are speaking for a long time. However, be careful not to gulp ice-cold water before you go on as this constricts your throat and affects the quality of your voice. Drink a warm (not hot) cup of tea to relax your throat and ease your speaking voice.

For more details you may look at the following link:

http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/presentation/delivering-presentation

One more  general tip: often, questions asked after the presentatioin  cannot be understood by many people in the audience due to the fact that a microphone is not available in the audience. Therefore it is a good idea that the question is repeated  by the speaker himself (he has a microphone) before he starts with his answer

Dear Frank - excellent suggestion.. I also have a habit of rephrasing the question or making the question even tougher, then quickly explaining it to all and finally answering in detail for the general query. It is also a good courtesy to acknowledge the queries like "Good question" etc.  Repeating the question also gives us some extra time to prepare our answers..

Steps to becoming an effective presenter include:

1. Practise

The more familiar you are with your material the more you will be able to inspire your audience’s trust and confidence. Do more than practise reading through your material to yourself. If possible, stand up in a room and deliver your presentation to the walls. Get used to hearing your own voice filling a room. Familiarise yourself with the words and phrases in your presentation. Play around with different volumes and see how well you can hear your own voice. Above all, familiarise yourself with the main thrust of your argument and explore how the individual elements of your presentation piece together. This will help you to keep to your chosen objectives and avoid distractions when it comes to your actual delivery.

2. Assert yourself

An effective presenter needs to be assertive, not aggressive. There are two important Ps.

Posture

It is important to appear confident at all times. Different postures create different moods. A very formal, upright and still posture will create a very different atmosphere from a relaxed and active one. Remember to match your physical behaviour to the objectives underpinning your presentation. If you want to be either formal or informal, make deliberate choices about your physical style and stick to these.

Presence

Have the confidence to fill your space in front of an audience. Avoid apologising for your presence by saying “sorry” (although you must be polite if circumstances so demand— e.g. the session is running over time, or the microphone has stopped working). Also, avoid physical apologies by hiding behind a desk or lectern. You must be confident that the audience wants to listen and that you have something interesting to tell them. Don’t be afraid to wait for an audience to settle down before you start speaking or to ask for quiet if this does not happen.

3. Make contact with your audience

One of the key challenges faced by the presenter is to establish links with her/his audience (a poor presenter appears to be speaking to an empty room). Making contact helps to maintain an audience's interest and encourages them to believe that you are genuinely interested in talking to them. You can make contact with your audience in a number of ways, including:

eye contact;

gestures;

spoken contact;

your use of language.

4. Use your voice

Your voice is a very flexible and powerful tool. You can use it in many different ways by varying the: volume; pace; pitch.

5. Breathe

Always remember to breath steadily and deeply. If you are anxious about making a presentation your breathing will become fast and shallow. This will affect the quality of your voice and your ability to speak clearly for extended periods of time. Try to take a few deep breaths before you make your presentation, making a conscious effort to slow your breathing down and taking in more air with each breath. During your presentation, use pauses after questions or at the end of sections to allow comfortable breathing patterns. Don’t be afraid to slow down the pace of your presentation if your breathing becomes uncomfortable.

6. Drink

It is a good idea to have some liquid to hand to quench your thirst if you are speaking for a long time. However, be careful not to gulp ice-cold water before you go on as this constricts your throat and affects the quality of your voice. Drink a warm (not hot) cup of tea to relax your throat and ease your speaking voice.

For more details you may look at the following link:

http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/presentation/delivering-presentation

I am a big fan of Prof. Mahfuz Judeh in RG, and once again I thank him for a great reply to this query. His answer will be highly beneficial for all the young researchers who have to make an academic presentation in their class or in a conference.The voice modulation is a technique used very aptly by the religious preachers! We can learn from them in voice modulation, but kindly avoid "preaching" in an academic talk. Avoid "stories" in a short presentation, but you may use them to break monotony in a long presentation. Use humour if it comes naturally for you, but otherwise give a normal, clean, lecture. Have some objectives for your presentation and the whole task is how to meet these objectives within the stipulated time. In my view, short, brief talks that hits the nail on the head are better than long talks in which the speaker drills on the same point again and again. Some audience may get scared when a speaker opens a PPT talk of 200+ slides for a plenary address..

The presentations have become a tool ESSENTIAL, is a key component in the process of communicating your ideas to allocate to a specific target audience. A good presentation is like a good story, obvious that the contents are important, but think about how you can engage your audience, during a presentation, if you have a good graphic design.

Basically, to date, we know two main tools for creating presentations: the very traditional and well-known Microsoft PowerPoint (which over time is not to have undergone many transformations) and allows you to create custom slide shows and present them one after the other .

The second tool to make presentations, undoubtedly more appealing than PowerPoint, Prezi, personally I think that introduces a different concept of presentation, compared to the classical tool from Microsoft, thanks to the ability to "travel" the look of 'user from slide to slide with special animated visualizations nonlinear (panning and zooming).

Emaze is an interesting online application that allows you to create fast, simple and effective beautiful presentations that work well with all types of browsers. The presentations can be viewed on different devices, and after you save them in the cloud, users can view it online or you can download the presentation as an HTML file and display it locally. Moreover you can also share your presentation within web pages or blogs using the .

At first glance, Emaze, looks like a hybrid between PowerPoint and Prezi because it allows users to interact with the presentation and "navigate" within it. Personally I think Emaze is more intuitive and easy to use compared to Prezi, which requires the use of more time to learn and become familiar with all the features it offers. Prezi is designed for those who are more oriented towards technology as the boys/girls accustomed to the use of the web for the Communication. The method may be usefuk for the boys of Painting, Sculpture and Restoration that maybe one day want to present, in a different way from usually, their work to an examination or to a potential customer. Here, for them it could be very functional.

You have got very good inputs by my friends. Dear @Sundar, Remember the 3 Es of Effective Delivery: Energy, Eye Contact, and Expression!

http://www.hamilton.edu/oralcommunication/tips-for-effective-delivery

Dear @Sundar, here are some good Research Gate based papers related to your thread!

Article Keys to Effective Presentation

Article How to give an effective presentation

Article Effective presentations: how can we learn from the experts?

"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action."

William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

Knowing beforehand the intellectual capabilities of your audience, first and foremost! 

Dear Marwan - Excellent point. This is what I hinted by the Shakespeare quote - "Suit the action to the word, and the word to the action." We must prepare our speeches to suit the audience. Sometimes, familiarity with the room (in a Conference) also helps. Mentally, if we plan where to stand (position) and how to deliver (posture), it will help a lot. When I conduct AIRCC Conferences (Computer Science & IT) as a General Chair, I make a point to reach the venue well before Registration starts, and get familiar with the audience. This mutual exchange before the Conference breaks the ice and helps our presentations.

I am adding few more tips to these:

content of presentation should be interesting enough to common people;

voice of presenter should be loud and clear;

slides of PP Presentation should not be hazy;

answers given to questions in post-presentation portion should be understandable enough to all audiences.

The more the interaction with the audiences, the more effective will be the program.

Thank you.

Sufficient tips were listed from all previous comments. One more is helpful, be focused and kiss it simple.

Very well said by Mahfuz, he has listed the most important steps that make an effective presenter.

Yes Mohammad - excellent reply by Prof. Mahfuz! He gives very detailed replies to many queries and I am his big fan.

A few points to consider in scientific presentations:

• KIS - keeping it simple and CCC clutter creates confusion =presenting one main idea in each slide
• Outlining the main points in the beginning
• Showing enthusiasm
• Respecting the time limit

I have also attached a PPT file on preparing good slides which I use in a graduate course.

Thanks Prof. Behrouz Ahmadi-Nedushan for your PPT template! Since my visit to Tunisia in 2013 for conducting a Control Conference, I am using mostly LaTeX-Beamer package for my conference presentations. This beamer package generates PDF output that resembles PPT and the advantage is in easy typing of Mathematical equations, which come out better with LaTeX. Best wishes, Sundar

There's one new great tool that I'm using recently to build my research figures and presentations, it's very easy to use and it has a gorgeous cientific illustrations database, you should give it a try:

http://mindthegraph.com/

Best regards, Juliana.

LaTeX beamer is the best choice to do good presentations. Previously I did some presentations in PowerPoint, but LaTeX is by far the best software to prepare nice-looking elegant slides: you ca design the layout, control the details, etc. Here is my latest LaTeX-based presentation:

Presentation Scatterplot Matrices of the Geomorphic Structure of the Mari...