Openings that kill your presentation

The first few moments of your presentation is when your audiences attention peaks.

 If you work at it you keep their attention for the rest of the time but even if you lose it, those first few moments should not be squandered. So don't waste it doing the following:

• talking about background and history of the subject area
• describing your organisation with charts and names
• talking about your experience with more than one item from your CV
• describing your organisation, "all about us", to outsiders. They want to know what you can do for THEM
• telling a joke or anecdote. It's usually irrelevant and just keeps the audience waiting. It's also hard to do this well. So even if the joke is relevant, wait until later and just get the talk started
• describing your organisation...
• apologising for being late, for equipment not working properly, for not preparing enough, for not really being an expert (!), for bad slides etc etc etc
• describing your organisation...
• fumbling around with notes and trying to think of something to say to start

You get the idea? Instead try to start with something that is of real interest to your audience. The "what's in it for me?" message. Describe an interesting problem or situation and then proceed to solve it during your presentation. Dive straight into the subject matter and what's really interesting and come back to a little of the background information when people understand why they need to know it. Let your credibility rest on giving a well-prepared and well-informed presentation, and don't spend time talking about yourself and all the important things you know or have done.