More presentation tips
The good folks over at Creating Passionate Users have posted a nice article with tips on how to put together a presentation that doesn't drive people quickly and completely into snooze mode in the first 10 minutes.
Well worth a read in full, but some of the key points that made me notice were the things I see in other presentations that drive me nuts and that I try to avoid.
1. Don't cover history. History is dull, boring, numbing and tedious.
2. Don't big note yourself. It might make you feel good to do it in front of a big crowd, but it drives me nuts and to be honest I don't care.
The number of times I've seen company presentations where the first 900 slides are about the company's history and how many wonderful other companies they've sold their snake oil to drives me bonkers. If I see them these days I'm just about ready to walk out. Why are they wasting my time!! Grrrrr...
The article also has some "do's" all of which centre around trying to make it an emotional experience (if possible). Evoke some sort of feeling in the audience - surprise, humour, desire, hope, whatever you like. Without any emotional content you'll lose your audience faster than you can blink.
It's hard to do this at times, but keep at it and your skills will improve and your audiences will be more involved in what you say (and will hopefully remember it as well).
Well worth a read in full, but some of the key points that made me notice were the things I see in other presentations that drive me nuts and that I try to avoid.
1. Don't cover history. History is dull, boring, numbing and tedious.
2. Don't big note yourself. It might make you feel good to do it in front of a big crowd, but it drives me nuts and to be honest I don't care.
The number of times I've seen company presentations where the first 900 slides are about the company's history and how many wonderful other companies they've sold their snake oil to drives me bonkers. If I see them these days I'm just about ready to walk out. Why are they wasting my time!! Grrrrr...
The article also has some "do's" all of which centre around trying to make it an emotional experience (if possible). Evoke some sort of feeling in the audience - surprise, humour, desire, hope, whatever you like. Without any emotional content you'll lose your audience faster than you can blink.
It's hard to do this at times, but keep at it and your skills will improve and your audiences will be more involved in what you say (and will hopefully remember it as well).