Presentation Zen

If you do public presentations, and you aren't reading this blog, you are missing out:  Presentation Zen

As an example, check out this Gates vs. Jobs presentation smackdown!

I'm not suggesting you "present different" for the sake of being different. I am saying that if you move far beyond what is typical and normal in the context of presentation design, you will be more effective and different and memorable. Maybe Microsoft can afford lousy PowerPoint presentations, but you and I can't. For "the rest of us," it all matters.

If you aren't trying to be effective and memorable, why are you bothering to do a presentation?

The main problem is that PowerPoint defaults to boring presentation.  As a tool, it can be put to creative use (vis David Byrne), but it's the person using the tool that makes the difference.

I'm talking to the Marketing Committee at my kid's school tomorrow about the basics of online marketing (organic search ranking and pay-per-click advertising).  A standard "bullet point" presentation would have taken about 10 minutes to put together.  Trying to be more creative (following, or perhaps not following, Seth Godin's Bad PowerPoint thinking) took me about 10x longer.  Hopefully, the presentation will be 10x better.

Comments

[Hank Ratzesberger]

A link which snatches the pebble from my hand! (ok, not Zen, but...)

[Brian Pauw]

Well, I think if you put together a dull and uninspiring presentation, you'd be wasting the time of all of your audience. I always tell people to spend at least a load of time preparing visual representations of their systems, techniques or problems. This is so incredibly important in presentations: it gathers the attention of the audience, it engages their creative mind and it keeps their attention on you (because they don't have to read). Furthermore, illustrations highlight the power of slides.

You don't need slides to convey text. You can tell people what text you want them to remember. You need slides to convey ideas, impressions and schematics, things difficult to tell. Nothing else.

...In my opinion :).

B.