How to prepare good presentations (…not)
Did you know that
there are over 300million* users of PowerPoint? I didn’t know either. *estimate
Did you know that they
do 30million* presentations each day? I didn’t know either. *estimation
Did you know 50%* of
them are unbearable? I knew that. *estimation
Probably some of you have already seen the worst of the worst when it
comes to PowerPoint presentations. Some of us have given their lives during
some of the presentations in PJATK. I knew a guy once…. Yeah, a guy….
So what can you do to
make it better?
1)
Animate.
Every slide should have some sort of animation. It has been added to PowerPoint
for all of us to use. You can add animations to slides, titles, words, bullet
points. Sometimes adding more than one can go a long way. But if this is not
exactly what you want, you can make a custom path for your animations.
2)
Make a
timeline for your presentation. They should be short so you don’t linger over
each slide. It helps to keep you in check and the urgency of the slideshow will
help you in your body language. Add a little cherry on top, crunch a little
more data in your presentation. In business meetings the more the better.
3)
Try not to
fluctuate you voice too much. It will help you conserve energy and the audience
will not feel like they are being pushed into your subject. Monotone if
necessary.
4)
Text is your
friend. Try to keep a maximum of 7 to 10 major and important bullet point per
slide. Having too much (i.e. pictures) can feel like overcrowding listeners.
5)
Don’t
stick with boring presentation layouts. Have you seen the new beautiful layouts
and fonts in new PowerPoint? Business is moving towards 21st century so you don’t have to use those boring
fonts. There are many to choose from. Remember about colors. They have to be
clearly visible and very exciting. Remember that colors are the only way to
bring attention of your listeners (you can download new extra fonts from the Internet
as well).
6)
For
maximum emphasis, assign bullet point to every important word or
sentence. It makes the whole presentation feel more powerful. You can even
increase the font size for these bullet points so that the most important
knowledge is available.
7)
Don’t be
afraid to repeat yourself. If audience
needs it, do it. Sometimes it is even better to repeat every important
information for maximum emphasis so that the audience understands
everything.
8)
Reading
from screen is a big no no, but if you use a laser pointer to show a specific
bullet point, you can read it from the slide to make it even more important.
9)
Structure
of the presentation is somewhat
important. It is a business presentation not a fairy tale so please don’t try
to make it as one.
10)
Rule of 7:
a.
7 lines
per slide
b.
7 words
per line
c.
6 seconds
to understand the slide
11)
Make sure
the audience will remember after you finish. Give them something they
will never forget or something to read. Everyone is an individual so why not
printing a copy of you presentation for every member? That way they can return
to your presentation if needed.
12)
There are
times when the laser pointer just doesn't work and you need to show something
on the slide. Don’t worry about moving around and physically showing what you are talking about. Try not to cover the parts explained, rest doesn’t
matter at this particular moment.
13)
3 rules
for giving the best presentations:
a.
Show how
smart and educated you are about this topic
b.
Say everything
you know – there is nothing worse than not very educational presentation
c.
Don’t be
afraid to give technical details of your work. Audience is there to listen to
what you have to say
14)
Answer the
question as soon as it pops out from the audience. Better now than to have to remember about it later
on (or even worse, forgetting about this question)
15)
Contrasting
colors, use them, don’t use them. Remember about them.
16)
Don’t be a
hypocrite
17)
Fancy
backgrounds can go a long way. They are added to the PowerPoint for a reason.
18)
Images=Emotions.
As for business presentations stick to text and pure facts rather than art.
19)
Ask
rhetorical questions a lot, it can stop the presentation from being boring
20)
Assumptions:
a.
Audience
is here for a reason, they know their fields, business audience is prepared for
a presentation beforehand
b.
Business
audience is skilled in business
c.
Everyone
is eager to learn about the latest developments
d.
Everyone
is fresh and alert
21)
A good presentation
should be like a mini skirt – short enough to cover vital points and long
enough to remain interesting
Source:
Now you know most of the rules, go and make the world a better place.
Questions:
1)
Do you
suffer from bad PowerPoint presentations?
2)
Have
someone ever fallen asleep during a presentation? Why? I know I did…..
I think that people don't like bad PowerPoint presentation and you can see good example of that during someone long speach. I think that the slides have to be clear and easy to understand. A lot of presentations have slides that are boring and hard to understand.
ReplyDeleteThe most important thing when you are doing presentation is your body language and tone of your voice.
I really often fall asleep during presentations because they are boring or the person who lead the presentation is not confident and his tone of voice is sleepy.
I think that the best tip for someone who is giving a presentation is to be confident about yourself and try speaking in interesting way.
Kasia, Thank You for You input. I do agree with You 100%.
ReplyDeleteGiving presentations is really hard, there are so many things to remember that You don't control yourself anymore. Body language is hard to control and for someone who is not comfortable with giving speaches, it can be impossible.
As for: "I really often fall asleep during presentations because they are boring or the person who lead the presentation is not confident and his tone of voice is sleepy. " I think we might have been on the same lectures........
I had many occasions to see very bad presentation in PowerPoint. To be honest in my whole life I saw only one presentation that for me was very interesting, and finally different then usual. The most tragic ones are made by our teachers. They are terribly long, having only text from top to the bottom. Very often font in very small, because they want to write half of a book in one slide. Many times it also happens that colors are not contrasting, and we have huge difficulties with seeing what is written.
ReplyDeleteThe second question is funny :) Of course I did, that’s why I am not attending lectures anymore…
Of course presentation is not only about slides in PowerPoint but also about presenting it to people. I like when slides does not contain tons of text, they should be short only with major points, that later are expanded in speech. There is nothing worse then just reading everything that is written. We can read, don't need a lector.
Karolina, thx for input. I do have to agree that some if not most of the presentations given during lectures in our school are just terrible. But on the other hand I know for a fact, that it is really hard to give a proper presentation. I know all of this and still make stupid mistakes :)
ReplyDeleteDepending on your subjects, but it is better to attend lectures. At least from my experiences.
Little comment for the last part - remember that we are in school. We are here to learn and understand things. If you stick just to couple of points that would be explained only during the presentation itself, how would you prepare for all sort of tests?
For making the presentation I prefer to use Prezi :D
ReplyDeleteI think everyone has seen a terrible presentation more than once. My biggest nightmare is presentation overflowing with text - I often see them on lectures in our school. It's really hard to read all the text AND listen to the lecturer at once, not to mention remembering and understanding everything. I think even the bad layout is not as bad as this.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the digital presentation itself is not the crucial part, though; the charisma of the lecturer is far more important for me than the right colors in PowerPoint. Last year some of the students from our school attended lectures given by Adobe employees. Even though they didn't use any fancy presentation software with animations and strong colors, they spoke in such an interesting, confident way that I didn't feel they need any software supporting their speeches.
However, I must say I didn't quite understand what you mean by rule 16 in you article :)
I'm not suffer from PowerPoint presentation but I know that is hard to present it well. As author said presentations should be short and interesting with key points on slides only not elaborates.
ReplyDeleteIn refference to sleeping at presentation, yes. I very often see people who fall asleep because topic and way of presenting is tragic.
Like someone mantioned, Prezi is an awsome tool for making presentations not boring. But then, I tried using prezi to make a simple presentation and believe me it is not easy. I've spend at least 4hours before the end product was something worth showing when on the other hand doing it in PowerPoint would have taken like 15minutes.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to point 16 - maybe something like - share what you know to the fullest.
And falling asleep is natural when something is simply boring. At least you get a good power nap xD
ReplyDeleteI have never used Prezi, but I saw two or three really good presentations prepared with this tool.
ReplyDeleteIn the last couple of years I have attended to quite a few IT conferences.
As I recall my experience as a attendant - my impression was that the Powerpoint is not the most important element. The skill of the presenter seemed to be the factor that determined weather I liked the "show" or not.
Most of my personal experiences with presentations took place at school - I learned that it is not easy to do in a right way. The most important thing is to know the subject very well - there is nothing worse than being asked a question that you don't know how to answer during presentation.
The article mentioned useful advice for preparing the presentation. Most of them were already known to me but it is definitely a proper guide which guarantees that our Powerpoint will be bearable for the listeners :)
It is rather rare for me to sleep at presentation, but obviously sometimes I'm suffering :) What makes me bored? Lot of text placed in presentation instead of most important informations, monotony and inconsistent transfer of message.
ReplyDeleteThe reason is that lot of people doing it fast and not accurate, probably without self-imposed timeline. By the way marking timeline in notes is a good idea.
I think I don't suffer from bad PowerPoint presentations, but it's not for me to judge them I guess. I always try to make everything interesting or pleasant at least. What's more I believe, the less text the better. The worst presentations are these where you have walls of text on the whole page and nothing else. I mean, these things shouldn't be there, this should be delivered by the lecturer. I can read a book otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI've seen countless people falling asleep during presentations. I dozed off a few times myself, it can't be helped if the subject is boring and presentation itself uninteresting. What I hate most is the monotonous voice - it instantly puts me into sleep.
A lot of people create interesting presentations but present them in a boring way, so then you can fall asleep. The most important is a good way to communicate with the audience. If, during the presentation of a lot going on, and the teacher says in an interesting way it is impossible to feel the boredom. The best way to make the presentation was interesting is to tell a joke that will relax atmosphere
ReplyDeleteAs i think most of us already agreed to, ist that the presentation itself is not that important.
ReplyDeleteAneta, what do mean by marking a timeline?
Maciek, what about a business presentation, would you make a joke then aswell?
I think that presentations is less important than person who is presenting it, because even from crappy presentation someone with good speaking skill could interest the audience with presented topic. But still good presentations may help a lot in presenting the topic.
ReplyDeleteI never had a problem with preparing PowerPoint presentation it's quite easy for me, but the presenting before audience is harder for me. Those of you who would like to present really nice presentations should definitely improve body language and ability to adjust to audience. Here you can watch really interesting movie about body language in presentations and how to improve it. I would also recommend to you Allan Pease book "Jak czytać myśli ludzi z ich gestów". In this book you can find a lot of advice witch may help you with audience.
In my opinion the most important is the person who presenting presentations. Presentation can only help to show some facts, but speaking skills is the key to success. I can recommend reveal.js to create presentation. It is fine tool to prepare good-looking press. Here is a more detailed description of this tool.
ReplyDeleteOf course I also had many occasions to see bad presentation in PowerPoint. The worst of them are those where there is only black text on a white background.
In my opinion Power Point presentations should be not too long, easy to understand and not complicated. There are many bad presentations where you sometimes can't understand too much. Yes not once I have fallen asleep at a Power Point presentation, but who hasn't :D
ReplyDeleteI haven't done many PowerPoit presentations in my life so far. I prefer presenting a topic by my self only, or by using more physical stuff. But if I have to do a PowerPoint presentation I assume that I should be in the centre of attention and the slides should only help me. If someone can get all the informations just by looking through your PowerPoint presentation that is not a good presentation. The presentation with out your personal comment is just a report.
ReplyDeleteA big group of application to preparing presentation exist but the most powerful and very useful is PowerPoint and Prezi. In fact I've never used prezi but presentations which was maked by it look interesting and different compare to PowerPoint
ReplyDelete