PowerPoint is the Devil!

Thanks to my job I have the pleasure to attend internal and external meetings every week.

I love meeting new people from different cultures and colleagues all over the world.

Often this happiness disappears at the beginning of powerpoint presentations.

Often the presenter is very well-prepared but it’s impossible to figure out the intent and why it’s worth caring about. Most likely, the presenter focused on their “message” leg—dumping everything they know onto individual slides—but forgot to give equal attention to developing the “visual story” of the stool.

Presenters often read their slides instead of putting in the effort necessary to transform them into visual stories that support their message.

Presentations should be simple and support our communication, not be our communication.

Before starting to create a presentation we must define our audience and the best way is to start building audience personas.            

Jim Endicott, author of The Presentation Survival Skills Guide, refers to the presentation development process as a three-step: message, visual story, and delivery. 

The most important success factor for every PowerPoint presentation is storytelling!! 

A wonderful article: "Storytelling that moves people" on Harward Business Review.

5 rules that will change the way you give PowerPoint presentations:

Using Images Worth a Thousand Words by Mitchell Baker. 

1. A picture is worth 1a 000 words but don’t treat all images in PowerPoint the same way. The kind of treatment should depend on the purpose the image serves on your slide. Placing it the right way makes your presentations look professional. For Emotional images deserve a full page display, Educational images require clear callouts, Using metaphors and analogies in your slides makes your message memorable and remember multiple images require a good “organization” in the slide.
2. Text is evil! Do not use slide as a manuscript!!! Less is more: less content on a slide is more easily processed by your audience. Focus learners’ attention on you and your message by removing all unnecessary content from your slides. For each object on a slide, ask yourself: “Does this absolutely have to be here for learners to get it?” If the answer is “No”, remove it! 
3. Break up your bullet points into separate slides! Use a few meaningful words on slides instead of full sentences.
4. Aim to use a minimum of 30-point font in the slide body and 40-point font in slide titles. This will reduce the number of words on a slide and make sure that the audience can see them.
5. Logos (and copyright and slide numbers...) on every slide are distracting and detract from your message. Logos add unnecessary clutter without adding value, especially if you’re presenting to an internal audience! If you can, keep your logo on the first and last slides and lose it on all slides in between. Ask before to your marketing department if you can...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Some of my favorite books:

• Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds
• slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte 

Source:

• 8 rules that will change the way you give PowerPoint presentations, Business Insider
• 7 Simple Rules for Creating Presentation Slides that Make Sense, www.Refresher-Training.com 

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