Farewell to Death by PowerPoint

Farewell to

Death by PowerPoint

A blended workshop ofpresentation design,

best practices,and PowerPoint technique

Rick Altmanwww.BetterPresenting.com

Oh, the Pain!

Most members of audiences just expect to be bored during business

presentations. Why is that? Why is it that Death by PowerPoint is in

everyone’s vocabulary? How is it that we have gotten into this place where

our own reputations are called into question just because we use

PowerPoint or speak in public?

Undertrainedl?According to our poll, most ofthose who are in thepresentation industry investedless than one hour of formaltraining in PowerPoint. A few ofthe respondents told us that itwas more like 15 minutes.

And delusional?The damning results of anotherpoll: Of sixty businesspeople,86% of them thought they weregood communicators. Theaudience had a different point ofview, however.

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Farewell to Death by PowerPoint

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Message disconnectMost presentations in corporateAmerica start with severalminutes about how wonderfulthe presenter’s company is, notwhat truly matters to audiencemembers. This creates animmediate disconnect. Resistingthis stands as one of the mostimportant changes you canmake to your company narrative.

Stupidity by PowerPointMany good presenters find itdifficult to showcase theirexpertise when they are saddledwith speaking to poorly-craftedslides. This is the slide thattennis coach Lon created, andwhile it is pretty simple, he wasderailed by it. He went on“defense” and got stuckexplaining the slide, instead oftruly sharing his ideas with theaudience.

This slide produced a muchbetter result, as he no longer feltcompelled to speak specificallyto the points on the slide. Thiswas simply his backdrop. Muchbetter.

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Farewell to Death by PowerPoint Oh, the Pain!


Start away fromthe computerModern computers arewonderfully sophisticateddevices, with which you canproduce perfect work. That isnot good news for creativethinkers, who should not betrying for perfect when theybegin a project. This scribbledsheet of paper is a better way tothink creatively.

No phone booths allowed!Why do we feel as if we mustcram so much text onto ourslides. There are many reasonsfor it, and all have solutions.(Except the first one.)

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Farewell to Death by PowerPoint Oh, the Pain!


Stand and Deliver

There are some who believe that outstanding public speakers were born

with their talents and that all the training in the world couldn’t equal

that.We won’t participate in that debate, because we’re not interested in

whether you were preordained to be a great speaker—we care only about

making you better than you are right now. And on that score, there is only

good news: there are real, tangible, physical behaviors that you can

perform to make you a more effective presenter. That is our focus here.

Be natural, be unguardedYour objective: to share yourthoughts with your audience inthe most natural way. As themost important part of thepresentation, you want toeliminate as many barriers aspossible between you and youraudience.

No wonder…Here is one of the reasons whythe deck is stacked against thosein the presentation business.Most people consider it moreterrifying than dying.

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“Don’t be nervous”That’s really bad advice. Youcan’t make yourself not benervous; you either are or youaren’t, and given the choice, itwould be better for you to benervous. Here’s what one of thebest pressure performers in all ofbaseball had to say about it.

Instead of trying to quell yournerves, learn how to control thatenergy. If you can control thepace at which you speak, thenyou give yourself the chance toslow down your entire body.Using big muscles helps:laughing uses your diaphragmand large upper-body gesturesuses big muscle groups.

Think audience leftIf you have the choice, considerstanding to the left of thescreen. That will be morecomfortable for your audiencewhen showing standard textslides. That way, audiencemembers can focus on you andthen begin reading from left toright.

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Farewell to Death by PowerPoint Stand and Deliver


Presenting remotelyWebinars are here to stay andthey are challenging. To helpyou thrive, think about writingout your intro, your ending, andkey transitions. And if it helpsyou speak more effectively,stand up, just as you would in alive presentation. Finally, acceptthe fact that they will multitask.

Because it’s hard to predict thequality of your connection, don’tuse ornate animation; just Fadeand Appear. If you log in asecond device as a guest, atleast you will know if there is alag and you can adjust.

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Farewell to Death by PowerPoint Stand and Deliver


Survival Skills for the Non-Designer

Most people who work in the presentation space are not professional

graphic designers. Fortunately, having pretty slides is not what presentation

design is about. It is about creating a good foundation for delivering

relevant and compelling messages. Once you develop instincts for good

presentation design, slide design becomes easier.

World’s most importantpresentation adviceNobody enters the room excitedto see your slides. When youmake them more important thanyou, everybody loses. You arethe reason that people come toa presentation.

Design vs. DécorMany involved in presentationdesign don’t actually know whatthe word means. They mistakedesign for decoration. Both areimportant but goodpresentation design supercedesattractive slides.

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Are you too prepared?Many content creators work toohard and many presenters don’tprepare enough. Here are threequestions to which presentersmust be able to answer yes.

How would you do with a slidelike this? It would take aprepared and disciplinedpresenter to not go on defense.If you could answer yes to thequestions above, you mightstand a good chance.

Irony alert: if you were thatprepared, you wouldn’t needyour slides to act like a script.You would do just fine with thisslide instead, and your audiencewould prefer it.

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Farewell to Death by PowerPoint Survival Skills for the Non-Designer


The three-word challenge

Slides with fully-formed thoughts areconfusing to the audience and deadlychallenging to the presenter.

Honing and distilling your thoughts is thefirst step toward better presentation design,and is an excellent way to become morefamiliar with your content and what the trulyimportant messages are.

After removing all extraneous words, theresulting slide would provide a much betterbackdrop, even if you chose to go no furtherwith slide design.

The beauty of clearing out all that flotsam,though, is that you can go further, and itstarts with locating a visually evocativephoto that supports the theme.

By creating a semi-transparent shape overthe photo, you can create sufficient contrastto ensure text readability over the photo.

That’s good presentation design…

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The handout dilemmaA good presentation consists of whatyou say, what you show, and what yougive. Those three things should bedifferent! When dealing withdeadlines, collaborative issues, andarcane software behavior, it’s all tooeasy to create a slide like the one attop right and call it a day. That usuallycompromises all three of thecomponents (say, show, and give).

Usually, slides this busy represent asure sign that a slide was intended tobe printed. If the presenter beginswith “You can’t see this, but...”, yoursuspicion is confirmed.

You might be tempted to useMicrosoft’s Handout engine, but allthat does is print the slides in smallerform with lines next to them. Printingyour slides never works! There willalways be better ways to approach thecreation of printed material to supportyour presentation.

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The handout solutionThe solution is to approach thehandout as a related but separateproject. While it will seem like extrawork at first, it will be better work: youwill be able to produce better visualsand better handouts, making theentire product better.

Our recommended approach is to usethe Notes page for your handout, asthis contains everything within onePowerPoint file. Using the NotesMaster, you can design a brandedformat for handouts that will provemuch more versatile than just printingslides.

By simply copying and pasting fromthe slide to the Notes page, all of thedetail you want to provide audiencemembers is captured in a better form.This will be better than a slide onmany levels: portrait, not landscape; 12or 14 point, not 18, 20, or higher;room for much more detail. In fact,this page includes the detail for twoslides, all in perfectly readable form.

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Without regard for the handout, youcan design a cleaner and moreimpactful slide for the livepresentation, highlighting the mostimportant statistics.

Now you are creatinga presentationpackage, whichspeaks much betterto your sensibilitiesas a communicator.You show that youunderstand the bestway to provideinformation to anaudience: inhighlighted form forthe live presentationand in detailed formfor the handout. The handout at right incorporatesthe details from two slides, as well as relatedmaterial, set in small type at the bottom.

Both of these pieces travel with the slidedeck if you use this technique of creating thehandout on the Notes page. To print it, yousimply choose Notes Page when printing orcreating the PDF.

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Resources from Rick Altman


Presentation Skills WorkshopsRobust and 100% customized workshopsfor your organization.www.BetterPresenting.com

The best-selling bookwith the most inflammatory title.

www.betterpresenting.com/the-book

The Presentation SummitOctober 23-26, 2016Just off the Las Vegas Strip.Four invaluable days for thepresentation professional.www.PresentationSummit.com

Documents

Farewell to Death by PowerPoint