If you are a nervous speaker, here are some useful tips:

1. The more meticulously you make contingency plans, the more bizarre the actual circumstances will turn out to be. 

2. Don't waste time trying to psyche yourself up - you are doomed, and you might as well face up to it.

3. Memorise your opening line. It is surprisingly easy to forget your own name when confronted with a sea of expectant faces - I usually write mine on my wrist for reference, although I invariably forget which wrist, when the moment comes.

4. Try to remember what the time was when you started speaking. Strange time dilation effects exist in auditoria, and if you don't keep track, you are likely to find the session moderator dragging you impatiently from the podium before you even get onto Slide 3.

5. Ignore Item 4 - you'll forget to look at your watch. You know you will.

6. The most reliable thing about technology is its unreliability. Back up your laptop slides with OHP slides, your OHP slides with a flip chart and your flip chart with handouts. In emergency, be prepared to mime.

7. Humour can be a great asset. Except in Alabama. Or Japan. Or Germany. Oh, and for heaven's sake, don't make jokes about women, men, the previous speaker, any subsequent speaker, the session moderator, the government, or any form of sentient life whatsoever, including vegetables (in case there are any in the audience).

8. After you finish speaking you will have to endure questions from the floor. This is the moment when your deadliest rival steps forward from the gloom to take your presentation apart, sentence by sentence. The only recourse I have found to be useful is to blind your opponent with the laser pointer.

9. When the talk is over, the questions have been answered and you are returning to your chair, remember that it is now perfectly permissible to faint.
http://www.cyberlife-research.com/articles/ieee/ieee5.htm
Steve Grand