The only reading this week that was really relevant to what my group is doing is the one about giving oral presentations. Specifically, the informal presentations. Our group has a fairly good working relationship with the client, and I would say that it is relatively informal. There is no need to dress up whenever we meet, so the informal presentations section will help out a lot. The first section of informal oral presentations was about understanding your audience. Even though it is a presentation, this section helped me understand that it is ok to interact with your audience. You can still be incredibly prepared for what you want to cover and what are going to say, but undoubtedly the client is going to have questions. I think that it is better to let them ask right there and then, and almost carry out the presentation as a one sided conversation. Even though it is a much less formal situation, you still need to make it memorable. A lot of business contacts and success can come from informal presentations. As such, the book offers several strategies for how to organize your informal presentation. The one that I liked the most was probably familiar to unfamiliar. Start with what the client already knows. Establishing a common base is probably the best way to be on the same page with your audience. From there, begin to build in pieces that they may not know before getting to the meat of your presentation. Finally, even though it is an informal presentation, and technical devices such as a computer and PowerPoint might not be available, it is still very important to use visual aids. I knew that there was a difference in what people remembered when they saw something visually vs. aurally, but I had no idea that the difference was so big, especially after an extended period of time.