David Kirkpatrick

May 22, 2009

Presentation tips

Filed under: Business, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — David Kirkpatrick @ 2:44 pm

Well, really these tips are all “don’ts” instead of “dos.” Good information for anyone who does presentations, expert or beginner.

From the link:

4. Read from Your Slides
“Most presenters who are just considered average or mediocre are usually caught reading the text on their slides,” Gallo says. This dreadful presentation technique ties into Gallo Rule #2. “When you place a lot of text on slides,” he says, “naturally you want to read from them, so you turn your back to audience and you read from slides on the display.”

Unfortunately, people read from their PowerPoint slides much more than they think they do, Gallo notes. “When you read from your notes or from slides,” he says, “that completely breaks the connection you have with audience.”

Gallo’s Tip: Practice your speech and know it cold, so that you can sustain eye contact with your audience while you are presenting. “Great presenters will do this: They glance at a slide just for a second to prompt them for the next piece of information,” Gallo says. “And then they turn and deliver to audience. They know what’s on the slide because they have practiced.”

February 25, 2009

PowerPoint don’ts

Filed under: Business, Technology — Tags: , , , — David Kirkpatrick @ 12:55 pm

By example.

From CIO.com, trainwreck number five:

Fun with Arrows: Part 2

This slide comes from a presentation that Jesper Laugesen sat through (Laugesen thought it worthy of a nomination for the “world’s worst” PPT slide). If the “community” is supposed to rally around this PowerPoint slide, then there might be a lot of confusion about just where to get started. PowerPoint experts say that bullet points and arrows shouldn’t be used (or kept to just a few). These arrows are quite disorienting.

Snooze Scale: ZZZ

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