Kathy Sierra nails it again in her latest blog post “Presentation Skills Considered Harmful”.  She makes the most awesome point that focusing too much on your presentation skills, and not about why your audience wants to see your presentation, means that you’re focusing on the wrong thing.  Focus on your audience and what they will take away.

It’s hard to pick out one quote, so I’ll go with this paragraph:

When you design for a user experience, you quit focusing on your skills and start focusing on their skills. What experience can you help them have? Can you give them a more powerful perspective? Can you give them a new idea with immediate implementation steps they can’t wait to work on? Can you give them a clear way to finally explain something to others that they’ve been feeling but could not articulate? Can you give them a new tip or trick that has such a high-payoff it feels like a superpower? Can you give them knowledge and insight into a tough topic, so they can have more interesting, high-resolution conversations in the hallway?

You might need to improve your presentation skills or style so that your audience can focus on the important message of the presentation.  She puts it this way: “I am a UI.  Nothing more.  And what’s a key attribute of a good UI?  It disappears.”