Today in Twitter, Steve Rubel pointed to Mitchell York’s “Less Is More” advice for presenters. In less-is-more fashion, Mitchell offered five concise tips. One really jumped out at me, although it was buried at number-four in the ranking:
4. Avoid PowerPoint. It’s easy to get caught up in the technology of the presentation instead of the material itself. We hide behind PowerPoint. The focus of the audience is on the pretty graphic instead of the speaker. You don’t need it! And if you have handouts, give them out at the end unless it’s important for people to follow along. Anything you do other than speak and make a connection with your audience is a distraction.
Powerpoint is among the biggest sins of far too many presenters. What’s even worse than a bad presenter is a bad presenter with Powerpoint. It’s like making a dull pain excruciating. Powerpoint presentations are best when used as a replacement for long, written printed reports — rarely anything more.
I agree that a bad presenter is a bad presenter no matter what.
Let’s not forget that humans are visual animals. “A picture says more than a 1,000 words” comes to mind.
I think a PowerPoint has got the purpose to VISUALIZE what the speaker is talking about. It can be extremely useful when used well.
For me that means that there should be as few words on a PowerPoint as possible. Use graphs, tables, pictures, etc to get the point across. Speak the words yourself.
I agree that a bad presenter is a bad presenter no matter what.
Let’s not forget that humans are visual animals. “A picture says more than a 1,000 words” comes to mind.
I think a PowerPoint has got the purpose to VISUALIZE what the speaker is talking about. It can be extremely useful when used well.
For me that means that there should be as few words on a PowerPoint as possible. Use graphs, tables, pictures, etc to get the point across. Speak the words yourself.