This blog is about presentations & public speaking - how to make 'em, how not to make 'em and how other people are making 'em. Feel free to read, use and comment on what you find here. And good luck with your presentations...
“My boss says I’ve got to PowerPoint!”
You’d be amazed at how many times I’ve heard that in the introductions of our public training sessions: sometimes it’s even true. While it’s true that sometimes your boss will tell you “to PowerPoint” (interesting how it’s become a verb, isn’t it – rather like “to Google”). It’s at least as common for people to be told something like “I need you to do a presentation on….” but for them to be so inured in the PowerPoint culture that they assume they’ve got to use PowerPoint without thinking about it.
While I have nothing in particular against the idea of using PowerPoint (though it has some technical issues which mean I think there are better alternatives) I always advise such people to do the Fuse Test. This is something I’ve mentioned before, but it bears repeating, I think. If the fuses went in the room where you’re about to present, could you find an alternative way to make your presentation: is the PowerPoint absolutely essential? If it isn’t, why are you using it in the first place? Consider the alternatives!
What alternatives?
Well, I’ll talk about the technical alternatives another time, but for now, how about you consider the radical alternative of no presentation software at all? There’s a bit of a fad for saying “I don’t use PowerPoint in my presentations” as a macho declaration, rather like saying “I don’t use brakes when I ride my bike.”. Macho, but stupid. Sometimes it’s the right thing to do to use your brakes/PowerPoint… it’s just that you should automatically use them without thinking about it.
Rude presenters…..
It’s always risky to provide examples of bad practice, for fear of alienating people – or worse, of them not seeing what’s wrong! However, I’ve just sat through a half-hour presentation which really, really let down the presenter and the company she was representing.
What’s wrong with it? Well, the only reason I sat through it was to review it, because while the speaker’s voice lets her down (she’s boring and there are an irritating number of “errs” and “umms”) it’s her slides that really kill things.
They’re over-crowded, with up to 13 bullet-points on a slide. Some of them even get partially hidden by the company logo she has on every slide!
Add to that a lack of spell-checking (how can you spell “Google” wrongly?!) and having to skip over some because of running out of time and, well… I’d like to think that who has had some of my presentations training would ever be so disrespectful to his or her audience.
Because that’s what it is. To make a presentation like this, you’re effectively saying that you are so much more important than the audience that you can’t be bothered to rehearse, to read through your slides, to check them and so on. Imagine how someone in business is going to respond if you make a pitch-presentation for business which tells them so clearly what you think of them…
Yes, I know this one is a bit controversial but sometimes you’ve just got to take the risk! As always you can contact me to talk these over.
Cheers…. Simon
Standing ovation
Everything about the presentation was right - the use of rhetoric, the passion, the articulation, the fact that the speaker understood microphones and how to use them, the fact that he didn’t look like he had his speech written down verbatim (I couldn’t see if he did or not)….
… and the content of course. It’s hard to argue with the sentiment of a speech that says, basically, “Let us be the generation that provides a free school place for every child in the world, everywhere. Let it be us.”
And who was this miracle man? Gordon Brown. Normally a man noted for his somewhat taciturn nature but certainly on this subject he was passionate! He combined all the technical skills that you’d expect with an experience, trained political heavy-weight, with the raw excitement of a committed man.
That’s the way to do it.
New Year’s Pause….. please!
I’m writing this on New Year’s Day (happy New Year everyone!) at my sister-in-law’s house. Her son talks, as many small children do, without breathing in; at least, I swear if he needs to breathe in at all he must do so through his ears, because he never stops talking. After a surprising short period of time, I stop noticing this feat, because I’ve tuned him out: I’ve stopped listening. I can’t understand what he’s saying so I stop making the attempt.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that he can’t talk properly – he can. It’s just that without any breaks or pauses, I’ve got no time to assimilate what he’s saying, no time to internally make sense of it. Without that pause-time, your presentation is going to suffer too: the knack is to give people as much as they can handle in one burst and then stop until they’re ready for more. Ifyouinsistupongivingthemallthethingsyouknowatonce you might as well tell them nothing at all – because it won’t mean anything to them. And as I’ve said before, what’s important isn’t what you say, it’s what they hear that counts!
Imagine this website without any punctuation – no commas, full stops or even any headlines. Could you understand it?
Unlikely.
So don’t forget your presentation resolution – punctuate your presentations! :)
As of tomorrow, it’s back to work, doing the presentation skills training thing!
