So one of the advantages of the great world wide web, and the wonderful programming languages that stitch the whole thing together in such a usable form is that we can communicate, share and learn so quickly these days. Power to wiki! With that in mind I have a few thoughts…
I just spent two days in a conference where information was transmitted via speakers ie., people yacking about their stuff (I was one too, but on a panel). Without exception all the main presenters used power points, some with embedded YouTube clips and others presenting self made 15 minute movies, but introduced with power points. While I commend the presenters for their work and for the efforts they make on behalf of people in our society, (they are truly Bodhisattvas) here are a few tips in terms of presentations.
For most of the presenters the 80/20 rule applied. I.e, 20% of their time gave us 80% of the best information…the rest of the time was spent by lots of folks on their cell phone’s web connection. There was one exception to this rule and he was a tremendously dynamic speaker who spoke from the heart, no power point needed (just a few revolving photos). He told poignant stories that had meaning to him and to the context of the conference…no notes or text and he spoke for an hour and everyone listened.
All in all this was a good conference and I’m not being harsh, but these thoughts occurred to me as I sat there for two days:
First a good place to see effective presentations is on the Demo site. This is an organization that launches start up tech companies, and the lessons about presentations are great. I went to Demo 07 as Press and it was the best conference I have ever attended and was more concert than poetry reading.
- Six minute presentations..if you can’t say it in six minutes…then what are you saying? Sounds harsh and impossible, but no one can remember all the points in a 20 or 40 minute presentation and after five or six minutes you need to shock them back into wakefulness. If you have a great deal of information…have a web address for people to go get more.
- Avoid using power points that repeat what you are saying. If you use a power point, have one or two key words on it, use photos to illustrate. The power point is the visual aid.
- Either don’t use notes or only use talking points…you can cover lots of ground in 6 minutes, but if you’re reading a prepared text it is far less effective than speaking from your heart to a list of ONLY THREE points
In the last two days I saw power point slides just like this one below. Now I am guilty of bad power point..I admit it..I once participated with my business partner in the crime of putting to sleep 20 high ranking (assistant deputy minister types) government officials and one IBM dude with a 64 slide power point presentation which was unbelievably boring. This was when PPTs were a novelty, but OMG I have never forgotten how intensely stupefying that presentation was, even though the information was so relevant, so hot, so new, so unique and so interesting…. The lucky thing for us was that the one guy who we needed most to impress actually stayed awake and was quite interested. He laughed with us later, but that was close. So I truly know how to do it poorly.
Here’s a site which has the top ten effective presentation techniques and they make sense to me.
Here’s Seth Godin’s piece on presentations.
And last but not least check out what Guy Kawasaki thinks about presentations..you’ll be happy you did.
So have fun and be kind and all that.