Diamond Transition: [dahy-muhnd tran-zish-uhn] the end result of a failed alchemic effort undertaken by Microsoft in the 80s to keep audiences awake for periods longer than ten minutes.

The 80s may be a ten-year stain of memory on your brain that, looking back, you might have preferred to save for later tasks like remembering whether or not you have enough milk while at the grocery store. However you interpret the indelible Rorschach blot spanning the 80s department of your cerebral cortex, you have to admit one thing: the 80s were freakin’ awesome. There was good and bad, friend and enemy, popular and not. There was football, and there were cheerleaders. There was none of this millennial stuff, with the yoga, Pilates, self-esteem, and so on.

These days, there’s a sport for everyone, and everyone has a chance to be captain, but in those days you played football or spent lunch in your locker. Back then, high schools had real jocks, and they were always quarterbacks. Remember your high school quarterback? Remember how, after scoring a touchdown, he would take his helmet off and his glorious mullet would unroll like a red carpet, bouncing lightly as it extended well beyond the nape of his neck?

That, my friend, is exactly what the Diamond Transition is to presentations. As a healthy mullet was like Samson’s locks to your high school quarterback, so the Diamond Transition once captivated audiences everywhere as they listened to tales of “inter-nets” and personal computers from speakers whose eyes darted about beneath the upturned garage door sunglasses they sported. Nowadays, unfortunately, your high school quarterback has fallen from grace. He cut his mullet, and though he’s still an alpha wolf, he’s alpha wolf at a furniture store, where he runs the stock room. Such has been the fate of the Diamond Transition, forced to exist as it is in an Avatar world.

The Takeaway: Put it in reminiscent yearbook presentations to catapult your audience into the past, willing or otherwise. Apart from this specific use, avoid at all costs the Diamond Transition.

Spielberg: [speel-burg] a presentation master who, plucking the masses’ heartstrings as though they were a golden lyre, creates presentations that alter the course of peoples’ lives, of history, and of the very laws of nature itself.

Let me disappoint you: the Spielberg is an ideal that is aspired to; it does not yet exist. All around the world presentation attendees are sitting in firmly padded chairs, breathing manufactured air, and writing with hotel pens as they wait for the Spielberg to appear. The Spielberg, it is said, will change the world: whales will be saved, raises will be given, cubicle walls will crumble to the ground, etc. The Spielberg will motivate us with a perfect blend of humor, substance, and emotional appeal so that, perhaps for the first time, we will be able to walk away from a presentation thinking that we liked that guy.

Of course, the Spielberg can’t take all the credit. The Spielberg will have so many people to thank. His spouse, for lying awake each night for weeks listening to the strained comfort of a speaking voice, the same punch lines, and the same “stage laugh” again and again and again. The Spielberg will like to thank the intern for 63 trips to Starbucks without ever botching an order for a iced-triple-grande-soy-sugar-free-vanilla-light ice-two-raw-sugar-latte, and for collecting facts and figures for the presentation from three uninterested and “busy” intercompany departments, client testimonials, and the Library of Congress. The Spielberg will like to thank Momma and Papa Spielberg, who from an early age placed a great deal of importance on using complete sentences…you get the point.

It will take a village to raise the Spielberg, a village that knows presentations backwards, forwards, and side-to-side. The Spielberg can only come when we are ready for him, and there is so much more to do. For starters, it is hard to imagine the Spielberg ever even dropping by until bullet-point lists are kept in museums like the Smithsonian, right next to papyrus parchments with hieroglyphics on them.

The Takeaway: Great presentations are the outcome of enthusiastic collaborations from experienced teams united in a common purpose (i.e. making great presentations). Revolutionizing an industry starts with the trenchant efforts of every presenter to settle for nothing less than an excellent presentation.

Rewind: [ree-wahynd] the very real repetition of vital information; if fake, please see déjà vu.

Tapes, VHS cassettes, and movie reels are so obsolete at this point that a link to the standardized Webster’s definition of rewind might be in order. Of course, we can track backwards on CDs, DVDs, mp3s, etc. also, so why look specifically at tape-bound devices?

Simple: the unbelievable frustration we used to experience as we spent our lives rewinding tapes, stopping and starting again to see if we hit the right spot, paying fines at Blockbuster for failing to uphold our end of the $3.99, one-night rental agreement. “Be Kind, Please Rewind” is one mainstay of old-time morality we’re all happy to let drift away.

The most important part of the rewinding analogy, though, is the relationship between the cassette being rewound and the rewinder—that individual making the decision to rewind the content for a second experience. Tapes never rewind themselves, although many do dream of one day having the moxie to exercise such executive autonomy. The fact of the matter is that tapes have not advanced to a level of self-awareness that allows for them to accurately identify moments of sensory input that should be seen or heard twice. In military experiments, top-performing tapes still failed to rewind themselves to the funniest parts of Dumb and Dumber after months of intensive training.

There is some doubt as to whether or not presenters have this capacity, too. Certainly, an increased level of moxie is necessary to repeat one’s words or ideas. Even more so, though, said act would require a true connection with the audience to properly gauge their willingness to be subjected to an involuntary rewind of the sensory experience they just waded through. Proceed with caution.

The Takeaway: The world’s most famous speeches all employ repetition, but we can forget how many individuals have tried to use the rewind to lesser effect. If it is absolutely vital to communicate a certain idea, use all other means necessary—smart design, timing, hand gestures, etc.—before resorting to a literal rewind of the presentation.

Headlight: [hed-layht] literally, the projector light pointing at a presenter’s head and slowly burning out his or her retinas.

Experienced presenters can tell you that there is little difference between a moth and a professional speaker when forced to look into the light. More than two seconds of eye contact with that unflinching Cyclops will drag even the brainiest, most focused speaker into a tractor beam induced stupor that leaves audiences lost and bewildered as they try to follow the broken stutters of the broken presenter. Sitting in the gentle, ambient lighting of the average presentation venue, they have no idea what it feels like to have your rods and cones shaken up like cheap pancake batter until everything oozes out in an amorphous mess.

Wild hearts can’t be broken, but blindness isn’t necessarily an inevitable hazard of the speaking profession—unlike, say, jumping horses off of several-stories-tall platforms. Sure, struggle and strife build character and only make us stronger, but that’s no reason to seek out horrific ocular damage. So what can you do to protect yourself?

Plenty. For starters, try sunglasses: in addition to shielding your eyes, they’ll add a layer of mystery to your persona. Blindfolding works great for niche presenters, mainly magicians. Not facing the audience also solves the problem, though it does introduce new ones.

Or, try this simple approach: stop standing in front of the projector.

The Takeaway: Everything we do carries some level of risk. In the big picture, though, presenting really shouldn’t be a physically risky endeavor. Since managing emotions, nerves, facts and figures is complicated enough, try and keep from blinding yourself by putting the projector in a reasonable location.

Ripple: [rip-uhl] a wave that, properly surfed, takes presenters from small rural towns to big international cities.

What happens when a butterfly flaps its wings in South America?

Nothing, really. Some dumb butterfly in North America flaps its wings as well, and the result is an unbelievably minor trans-hemispheric game of Air Pong that we all casually disregard. Perhaps, if they had the Internet, opposable thumbs, larger brains, and iPads, the butterflies might discover that there is an effect named after them, and that if either the northern or southern butterflies would simply sit still for a bit, they could get the earth spinning off its axis until all the butterflies were together once more. They would discover that every butterfly has a long lost twin, and that they have the power to rule the world and occupy the most expansive fields of blooming wildflowers without interference from their archrivals, bees.

But they don’t have opposable thumbs or large brains, and their iPads’ sensitive touch screens pick up the undulating caresses of their resting wings, making it difficult for them to type anything meaningful without constantly having to start over. It’s frustrating.

Oddly, ripples and so-called “butterfly effects” work much more effectively for presenters. Give a rousing speech on contemporary dining etiquette at a Toastmasters club meeting, or elicit the cheers of your local Kiwanis club, and soon you may find yourself advising the UN on flatware service in the third-world. Giving the presentation is half the battle; learning to ride the ripples until they catapult you into wild success is the other half.

The Takeaway: You know when you’ve got a good presentation. Take time before delivery to lay out a framework for the road that presentation could put you on. As the ripples go out, you want to be prepared to handle any and all opportunities that come about.

Vay-cay: [vey-key] a mocking phrase used in lieu of ‘intermission’ to remind audiences that they could be doing other things with their time.

Some say disappointment doesn’t sell; others feel that, if you can enumerate the various things in people’s lives that could be better, they’ll be motivated to work harder to achieve them. Presenters from the latter category tend to be ruthless with their verbiage and imagery on stage, and it is these stern leaders that prefer calling breaks vay-cays.

As a word, vay-cay started out innocently enough. Clearly, saying the word vacation was getting especially tedious for a large group of individuals—especially since the only time people talk about vacations is while they are at work. Prior to vay-cay, people wasted countless milliseconds enunciated the final tion sound. Now, productivity in America soars, although in an ironic twist none of us have gotten any more vacation time at our jobs.

The word’s eventual ubiquity made it a natural colloquialism for delivering quick-draw disappointment on stage. At a moment’s notice, authoritarians had the ability to simultaneously thrill audiences with the promise of potty time and coffee, while still beating them down with the realization that while they sit in a windowless building listening to lectures, other people are frolicking on pristine white sand beaches and twirling in the refreshing ocean spray of Pacific waves. For leaders in the Disappointment School of Management, a movement that upholds the value of mass dissatisfaction, vay-cay became a truly valuable weapon: now, they could finally be both gregarious and brutal, the long sought after combination perfected by Hannibal, who after leading his men to victory over the Roman army, had the unique pleasure of informing them that yes, they would now need to go back over the Himalayas if they wanted to see their families again.

The Takeaway: Take special care to make your presentation as entertaining and valuable as possible so that audience members are not forced to wander off into dream sequences that are sure to disappoint.

Crush: [kruhsh] an often-unrequited emotional response some audience members have to the sound of an authoritarian voice over the microphone.

Crushes are the presentation world’s Sirens of Titan: adulatory praise is sure to bolster the egomaniacal red devil that stands on your shoulder, forcing you to engage them in the cosmic love affair you’ve got going on during Q&A. Meanwhile, your true intended audience—the board members who love the profits you can bring to the table—is fading…fading…fading…and gone.

Shutting down admirers in the audience can be tough, so it’s best not to encourage it in the first place. By no means should you purposefully bedeck yourself in sackcloth, scrape your boils with broken bits of pottery, and eat locusts and honey; rather, just dial it back a little bit. Do you have to wear your black leather jacket that makes you look like John Travolta circa Grease? If you’re a woman, is a bikini really appropriate presentation garb? And in both cases, what is with the intro that focuses on your Eharmony and Match.com profiles? Let’s pull it together, people.

The truth is, love that incubates in the halls of a speaking engagement rarely pans out. It’s like love formed during a dramatic rescue: what happens when Rambo decides he doesn’t want to take out the trash anymore, and refuses to put the toilet seat down? Real drama, that’s what.

Your presentation self isn’t your true self, and adoring fans just can’t see that. They’ll only ever love you for the authority and power you represent, and unless you want to roll a lectern around you on all your dates, you’re going to seriously disappoint them. So, against the wishes of your egomaniacal evil side, try to tamp down irrelevant praise and keep your eyes on those board members. They’re the ones that can really give you what you’re looking for.

The Takeaway: Excessive praise can be as damaging to a presentation as excessive criticism. It’s the appearance of balance that engages audiences: real, meaningful discussion of the matter at hand. Don’t let a need for edification derail your presentation at the end by keeping all questions on topic.

Brow Wipe: [brou wahyp] a subtle, hygienic gesture that removes the beads of sweat that form when one problem or another makes you realize that life is about to get very, very bad for you.

“Technical difficulties” is present-ese for a host of statistically impossible yet all-too-real failures: “my daughter saved over my slides with Dora the Explorer pictures”; “I spilled my Venti non-fat no-whip mocha into my pants when I stood up and will be back after a short consult with an EMT” (mental note: Decaf Venti non-fat no-whip mocha); or maybe just, “what do you mean the projector isn’t compatible with my iPad?” Whatever the case, relax: things are going to be just fine.

Actually, no they won’t. You’ll lose the account, an account your firm has held for over two centuries, and even though Steve Jobs said your iPad could be used as a presentation device—heck, he delivered his own keynote with it and raised Apple’s stock price by 1000%–you are going to be the fall guy for the entire colossal failure that never quite became the amazing presentation you thought you’d be giving.

Of course, maybe you can find a little culpability in the whole mess. After all, you let your daughter play on your work computer. You had the caffeine shakes from a 20 ounce—really, 20 ounces?—cardio bomb. You had the idea to deliver a vital presentation on brand-new, never-before-used technology. So maybe it’s just time to fall on the mic stand and let everyone go home.

Unless, of course, you’re a MacGyver presenter and you can turn the “technical difficulty” into a smoothly delivered narrative on the frailty of e-commerce in the 21st century, which is exactly why your client could benefit from upgrading their account to your proprietary enterprise service for an increase in firm revenue of $1.5 million overnight—in which case, well done.

The Takeaway: Technical difficulties happen; it’s the lack of preparation for them that is devastating. Always have plans B and C ready so that, even if the power goes out, you can build a campfire and make the time worthwhile for everyone.

HAG: [hag] an acronym meaning horrible at gestures that is applied to presenters whose physical style is…regrettable.

Though audience members are inclined to hate them instinctively, HAGs have succeeded in forging new ground in two new scientific pursuits: first, by conflating the nonverbal expressions of Steve Urkel and the Tasmanian Devil, HAGs introduced Interspecies Assimilation, a field that may one day combine more useful traits than nerdery and reckless destruction. Second, HAGs have prompted new studies in human behavior as more and more attendees report a common malaise—even during discussions of topics they are enthusiastic about—just from watching a HAG speak on the subject. Without HAGs, we might never have discovered that depression is actually communicable via painfully awkward physical movements in the public spectrum.

Being a HAG takes practice. You must spend hours a day resisting the urge to prepare for things. You must tie your hands in unsustainable positions for days at a time until a normal, relaxed posture is, for you, inconceivable. You must attire yourself asymmetrically in order to highlight your hard-earned HAGgery. But above all, you must become a master of not mastering time.

Timing is, perhaps, the most crucial element of joining this elite club of terrible presenters. Like syncopating a high hat with a snare, all gestures that have the potential to reinforce or enhance the spoken word must never correspond to the words they complement. They may lag, but the best HAGs allow physical gestures to precede the words they correspond to. Gestures that follow words indicate a lack of physical energy, even laziness, that is more angering than pity-inducing; gestures that precede words suggest the subjugation of the speaker’s body to nervous excitement. This is far more likely to solicit pity from an audience, a scenario that represents the apex of the awkward presentation.

The Takeaway: Nothing is more authoritative than simply appearing comfortable in front of your audience. This comes natural to no one, but good presenters practice all the time. Get comfortable in the scrutiny of others and you’ll find it much easier to get the message across.

Water Slide: [waw-ter slahyd] a slide that parents and children can enjoy together.

Slides are fun, of course, but you wouldn’t exactly call them trans-generational. It’s the water that pulls adults out of their lawn chairs to get into the action. Bad back, arthritic knees, and zinc oxide slathered noses notwithstanding, a water slide is perhaps the only relic of childhood that adults won’t leave behind when they graduate from college.

That said, not everyone enjoys them: that board member with no kids who has already burned through four wives? Hates them. Everyone in the accounting department? Won’t go near them. And don’t even ask the marketing folks: they like them a little too much.

Thus, you really want to save your water slides for the people that love them most: families. If you want the audience to have fond memories of you, just find a way to get their children to sit quietly by their side, get them laughing, and keep it that way for 1-36 hours. If you can get some popcorn and Twizzlers in the mix, all the better.

Of course, remember that water makes super 140s Italian wool smell like a wet sheep. It’ll wipe the crease right out of a pair of slacks, too, so if your audience is full of financiers, board members, or high caliber businesspeople, you may want to lay off on the water slides.

The Takeaway: Family friendly is always good with regard to content maturity. When it comes to complexity, though, audiences can sometimes want a little more meat than what a 7-year old can handle. Keep the content on par with the average capacity of your audience.