This past weekend was a very busy one for us as I'm sure it was for you and your family. With the Christmas holiday fast approaching, our kids have their end-of-year concerts for school and community groups they are involved in. Andrew performed a trumpet solo with a choir on Friday, Laura performed with her choir on Saturday, and Sunday was the children’s pageant at church. It amazes me how people in the arts find creative ways to communicate a story that is over 2,000 years old. They use different words and dramatic expression to give a new interpretation to the well-known story. When those performers are kids using their own sense of humor and expressions, then it becomes even more refreshing and inspiring.  As presenters, I encourage you to take in a performance or two in your local community during the holiday season. See how creative the performance is. Then think of how you can take a new, more creative approach to presenting your ideas in the new year.

I'm going to be taking time with my family over the next few weeks, so  the regular video podcasts and newsletter will resume in January. Merry Christmas and we wish you a safe and happy holiday season!

PowerPoint Tip: Best slide ever

While I was at the PowerPoint Live conference in October, I was interviewed by Ron Galloway, who is doing a documentary film on PowerPoint.  Here’s how he describes the film: “Regarding Powerpoint” will attempt to put the program’s influence on business, education, and thinking into meaningful context.  The film will be out early next year, but it is one of the questions he asked me that I want to expand on in today’s tip.

Ron asked me, “What is the best PowerPoint slide you have ever seen?”  I thought for a moment and came up with an answer that he wasn’t expecting.  And it may be one that you’ll find surprising as well.  I said the best slide was a black slide, where there was essentially nothing on the screen.  Now that may seem like a strange answer, but let me explain why I said it.

I believe that slides should only be used to enhance your message, not to take over your message.  Too often, presenters make the slides the message and, in reality, the audience doesn’t even need the presenter there.  Effective presenters use black slides to focus the audience on only one thing, the powerful message they are delivering.  There is no visual to distract the audience or compete with the message.  The spotlight is on you, not the visual support.

I use black slides when I am telling a story and want the emotion of the story to have impact without competing with a visual from a previous point.  It forces the audience to look into your eyes and you connect so much deeper with them.  When you are delivering the key point you want them to remember, use a black slide so they have 100% attention on your words and body language.

A colleague recently asked me to give feedback on her presentation at a conference.  She did a great job using humor and connecting with the audience.  But many times I felt that her slides took away from her message.  She used them to illustrate one of her key points, but then as she expanded on the idea, the slide was still showing and it distracted us from her message.  I suggested she use the slides, but once she showed us the quote or picture, go to a black slide so we can focus on her explaining the deeper application of the point to our lives. 

Using a black slide seems like a simple idea, but one that can improve the effectiveness of your presentation.  Part of thinking about presentation visuals is also thinking about when they are NOT needed.  Try it in your next presentation and let me know how it works.

Have you got your copy of The Visual Slide Revolution Yet?

A reviewer on Amazon.com titled their review of my book "Excellent for every business professional" and said:

"The concepts in this book are excellent and long overdue in the corporate world where muddled PowerPoint is the norm. Most PowerPoint books teach you how to create lovely-to-behold slides that contain very little data. Paradi tosses that paradigm upside down, with slides that even the artistically-challenged can create and that are rich with data - perfect for business managers.

The concepts are clear and practical, and demonstrated with actual examples from Paradi's consulting and training practice."

"... the content in this book is better than you'll find in books like Beyond Bullet Points or Your PowerPoint Sucks..."

"Bottom line is this deserves a place on every business professional's bookshelf." 

If you haven’t got your copy yet, go to www.VisualSlideRevolution.com today.

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From the Blog at PPtIdeas.blogspot.com: Misleading graphics undermine your credibility  

Look at this graphic from the front page of The Globe and Mail that shows the number of troops involved in four different conflicts.

Which conflict had the most troops involved? If you said the one that takes up most of the visual, you would have come to the immediate conclusion that most people would come to when looking at this visual. But that would be the wrong conclusion.

The area taken up by the troop icons for the conflict in Afghanistan is the largest area in the visual, representing about three-quarters of the area of the visual. Because we assign proportion based on the proportion of the area representing each item, we incorrectly conclude that this conflict involves the most troops.

If you count the troop icons, again you would conclude that the 135 icons in the Afghanistan conflict part of the visual would represent the largest number of troops since the next highest number of troop icons is 69. Again, this would lead you to an incorrect conclusion.

What the designer did was to use each icon in the Afghan conflict to represent 1,000 troops, but the smaller icons for the other conflicts represent 10,000 troops each. Yes, that is explained in small text below the visual, but most people will not see that explanation. Nor would they easily conclude that a much larger icon represents one-tenth of the smaller icon; it is counter-intuitive.

This is a prime example of a misleading visual. It tries to get you to draw a particular conclusion that is not actually supported by the data. It uses tricks and manipulation to deceive the viewer.

Presenters do this when they manipulate the vertical axis of a graph to show a change to be more dramatic than it actually is. Or when they crop out the part of a photo that gives it context and would cause people to come to a different conclusion. Or when they show only the results that support their point and don’t show data that would enable the audience to get a clear picture of the true situation.

Please don’t do this. Use visuals, but don’t manipulate them. It destroys your credibility and it causes your audience to start to questioning everything you have said. And your presentation is unlikely to be very successful.

See all blog posts and add your comments at http://pptideas.blogspot.com