Posts tagged presentations

You Suck At PowerPoint!

0
1 year ago
by Seth in ,

Or you might suck at PowerPoint if you don’t try to cut out the common mistakes many presenters make. I know that I used to suck – badly, too!
Over on his Slideshare page Jesse Dee has prepared a presentation for The World’s Best Presentation competition that he’s called, you guessed it, You Suck At PowerPoint.

As Jesse points out, there are countless other books and Slideshares out there that discuss how to improve you PowerPoint slides, I’ve posted several presentations with hints and tips here in the past myself. Jesse’s managed to condense all these ideas down into 5 easy to remember rules here though. Take a look – it might just save your talk!

YOU SUCK AT POWERPOINT!
View more presentations from @JESSEDEE.

I think I am probably still guilty of breaking the editing rule. My talks often contain too many slides. I’m going to have to work on that next. I Which of Jesse’s 5 rules do you break? Let us know in the comments section!

Best,

Seth.

The Language of Successful Presentations

7
1 year ago
by Seth in ,

Ever wondered how Apple manage to do such great presentations? Well, apart from the fact that they have fabulous designers who make wonderfully simple, easy to understand slides, they also use exceptionally positive language in their presentations.

Take a look at this video, what do you notice about the language used?

So, okay the video is actually a bit of gentle fun-poking at Apple (it’s a summary in 120 seconds of a 90 minute recent Apple talk) but it does illustrate really well the power of positive language in a talk. I don’t even remember what I saw in the vidoe, but I do remember that it was “great, fantastic, incredible, amazing” and other things like that.

Next time I, or one of my students present something, I’ll be sure that it’s amazing, incredible, fantastic, great, too. Won’t you?

Have you got any other key language, phrases or words that you encourage your students to use in their presentations? Be sure to share them in the comments section!
All the best, Seth.

The 10 20 30 rule.

The 10/20/30 PowerPoint Rule.

1
1 year ago
by Seth in ,

If you haven’t heard about it, Guy Kawasaki coined a clever little expression a while back to help folk improve their PowerPoint presentations. He called it the 10, 20, 30 rule.

 

The 10 20 30 rule.

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mag3737/

  • 10 – No more than ten slides in your presentation. This key number is supposed to help focus your audiences minds on your message, rather than your slides.
  • 20 – If you have a one hour meeting, aim to finish your slides in no more than 20 minutes. What with technical problems, questions and chatting, you’ll end up running out of time and going too fast at the end if you try to cram in too much.
  • 30 – No font size smaller than 30. If you want your audience to be able to read your slides (you do!) then make sure your text is legible. If you find yourself trying to use a smaller font to squeeze it all in, ask yourself:
    • do you need all that text anyway?
    • shouldn’t the main message come from you, not your slides?
    • wouldn’t it be better to spread the information over more than one slide?

What made me decide to point all this out here though is because I found a nice little presentation on SlideShare today by Cory O’Brien that explains all of this in a nice, visual way. Have a look:

 

The 10/20/30 Rule

 

View more presentations from Cory OBrien.

Guy even goes as far as giving us a suggested theme of what should go on each slide. Although I think this is far more relevant to marketers and business-people, I think it’s worth bearing in mind for education, too (and of course it works excellently for a business English teacher.) You can see Guy’s suggestions on Cory’s slide number 3 above. Better still, why not listen to it from the horses mouth Guy himself:

So, there we have it. If I haven’t convinced you, I hope Guy has!

Got a great PowerPoint tip? Is there a mnemonic-like “rule” you tell yourelf before starting to plan a presentation? Be sure to tell us about it in the comments section below! :)

All the best and happy presenting!

Seth.

 

 

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