[rytis]

Very good points. One question - any advise how to deal with people who "borrow" your presentation, in other words, they interrupt, and start explaining the concepts for you. It could be out of good will, an attempt to "help", but it can definitely ruin the flow for you. I tend to counter-interrupt and continue, but wondering if there's better solution.

[mindcrime]

One question - any advise how to deal with people who "borrow" your presentation, in other words, they interrupt, and start explaining the concepts for you.

Luckily I haven't encountered this often. And on at least one or two occasions, when something like this has happened, it's actually been a positive in that the person was adding useful information that complemented what I was already saying. In that case, I don't mind letting them go on for a minute or two.

That said, at some point you have to take back over if you're going to get through your material. It's not in my nature to generally be rude or brusque with people, but sometimes you may have to force the issue a little. You might choose to intentionally wear a wristwatch just so you can do the gambit of "conspicuously look at your watch, and then interrupt and say something like 'OK, in the interest of time we need to get back to the main thread now. Perhaps we can have a follow-up conversation later on XYZ.'"

A common interjection as well is something like "This is good stuff, but we're getting a bit off-topic. If you want to talk about that in more detail, grab me after the talk and we can chat." Something like that.

[Jtsummers]

At the start ask people to raise their hands if they have something to say, or make explicit points within the presentation for others to speak. If you're presenting on, say, a technical topic and the presentation (if in prose form) would have multiple sections, stop after each section and ask if anyone has anything to ask. Give them a chance to ask their question, and then take over again.

"What about X?" "Oh, that's actually going to be discussed in a few minutes." "What about Y?" "That's a good question but beyond the scope of this presentation, we can talk about that at the end if you'd like." "What about Z?" "Well, with Z ..."

But the critical thing is you only give them a chance to ask a question, and make that the format. Don't open it up to random side thoughts because then they will take over, "Well, actually with Foobar 3.0..." You've lost control at that point. If it's going to turn into a conversation between you and the person and will derail the presentation, move it to the end of the presentation.