How to thank others in your presentations

Tuesday

When thanking others in their presentation, people take one of two options. They start their presentation with the list of people they want to thank. Especially if this is a long list, this will start off your presentation on the wrong foot. The impression of your presentation is made in the first minutes and some people might see it as a waste of their time.
The second option is to do it at the end. Some people avoid this because sometimes not all people will last till the end.

Seth Godin gives us a third option and in my opinion, the best one:

Prepare for the talk by taking pictures of each person. If they're shy, you can even do photographs in groups of two or three. Good photos, clever photos, funny photos... photos that are interesting are best.

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.

Every single person you feature will be famous! "Hey, I saw you in that loop!"

And you won't have wasted your valuable presentation time.

If it's a company or organization you want to thank, you can of course use logos.

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