When audience members tell me in my Annoying PowerPoint survey that the speaker reading the slides is the most annoying thing about bad PowerPoint slides, some of the blame must be put on the “wall of text” slides that presenters use. Today I want to talk about how all this text puts the presenter in…
Tag: 2013
Eliminate 75% of the numbers; Issue #289 June 25, 2013
Information overload is the single biggest issue in presentations today according to audience members I have surveyed. In my book, Present It So They Get It, I devote a chapter to five strategies for laser focusing your information to avoid the overload problem. One of those strategies is to eliminate data that is not relevant…
Proportional Shape Comparison Diagrams; Issue #288 June 11, 2013
In February I launched a tool on my website that allows you to create diagrams like this: I refer to this type of diagram as a proportional shape comparison diagram because the size of the shapes allows the viewer to instantly compare the numbers each shape represents. These types of diagrams are popular in print…
Be prepared: VGA is going away; Issue #287 May 28, 2013
For many years presenters have walked into a room and connected their laptop to the projector using a VGA cable. All that will change in the next two years. The VGA port is being phased out by computer manufacturers. In this article I want to suggest what presenters can do now to prepare for this…
Don’t judge a presentation by the number of slides; Issue #286 May 14, 2013
When you open a PowerPoint file that has been sent to you, where do you look first? If you are like most people I speak to in my workshops, the first place you look is the lower left corner to see how many slides are in the file. Why do most people do this? Because…
Context Before Conclusion; Issue #285 April 30, 2013
When you show a slide on the screen, the audience will naturally look at it and start to decipher it. When they believe they understand it, they turn back to the presenter to hear what they are saying. Notice the sequence. The audience comes to a conclusion about the meaning of the slide before they…
Word clues to better organize information; Issue #284 April 16, 2013
With information overload being the number one issue for audiences today, how can presenters better organize their information so it is easier to understand? I see hundreds and hundreds of slides for each customized workshop I do as I create the slide makeovers for that group. I have come up with four clues that I…
Reduce the words in each point; Issue #283 April 2, 2013
In my latest book, Present It So They Get It, I provide five strategies for reducing the information in your presentation down to just what the audience needs to know. Information overload is the single biggest issue in presentations today, and in my workshops, this section on reducing information overload is always a popular one…
Raise the average two slides at a time; Issue #282 March 19, 2013
At the end of my workshops, I ask the participants if they have practical ideas that they can implement immediately to improve the effectiveness of their slides. Without exception, they all say that they have plenty of ideas they can use. In fact, the challenge is that they feel overwhelmed with everything they want to…
Testing your slides; Issue #281 March 5, 2013
What does the audience think when they see a spelling error or other mistake on your slides? They start to wonder if you really took the time to look at your slides before you presented and they question how much you care about delivering a great presentation for them. A lot of the mistakes I…