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"Are you still doing speeches in the stone age?" This
was the question a participant asked of a presenter at a
recent conference I attended. The presenter had lugged
along a box of transparency slides to show during his half
-day seminar, and I admit, I was a little doubtful at first
about the lack of modern technology. The presentation
went well, overall, but could have clearly been enhanced
by a good Microsoft PowerPoint, Lotus Freelance, or Aldus
Persuasion program. Additionally, it would have been
much easier to present for the speaker, and definitely
lighter to carry on the airplane. Later in the month,
I got a different perspective when I spoke a participant
one of my seminars after the rest of the class had gone.
She told me that when she first walked into the room,
she was very disheartened to see a computer-generated
image being shown on the screen. She confided that
although she had enjoyed the presentation entirely, and
that I had overcome her initial apprehension, her first
"Oh no! Not another PowerPoint Presentation"
This reaction is not unique, I've found. When talking to
people in my seminars and social settings, the message
I get is clear; People are tired of worn-out power point
presentations! Does this mean we should jettison the
technology and go back to the "stone age", as one person
put it, in giving our presentations? No more than we
should ban television because of the likes of Jerry Springer
and Temptation Island. The medium itself is not to blame,
it is how that medium is used that falls short. Too often,
presenters rely solely on their software to provide every
bit of their presentation's creativity. The problem with
this approach is that the entertainment value of
and other programs, leaves a lot to be desired. When a
speaker decides to use it as a crutch, instead of as an
enhancement tool, it can give a presenter a false sense
of security about a bad presentation. I've sat through
many a bad presentation where the insecure presenter
just hides behind a barrage of screen activity as a
gratuitous gimmick rather than having good illustrations
and attention-getting visual element to add in making
their points. So how should this medium be best used?
Obviously, there are millions of reasons for a presentation,
and therefore, millions of effective and creative ways to
deliver it. Creativity can take several forms, from the
spontaneous quip to the extravagant special effects of a
Hollywood blockbuster. Keep in mind, though, that a
crummy movie with very impressive special effects is still
a crummy movie, and the same rule applies to
Things that may work well in some presentations will
in others, but here are some general guidelines for
successful use of electronic slides.
1. Add, don't detract. If you find your presentation including
phrases like "Here is a picture of how we envision the final
product", or "Here is how the process works", with the appropriate
slides, it is probably working to your advantage. If, on the other
hand, we interrupt our thought flow, and that of our audience,
to draw attention, there is probably something lacking in the
content. In one notable presentation I attended, the presenter
gave the audience points one and two of his conclusion, then
said something like "OOPs! Don't be like this guy who just got
run over by a bus because he crossed the street without looking
both ways (while an on-screen video displayed the demise of
the unfortunate rube) now..., on to point three". While meant
to be humorous and draw attention to his third point, which
was to be prepared for the unexpected calamity, it completely
distracted the audience from his closing, and got most of them
off the path which he was trying diligently to lead them down.
2. Don't distract. This brings up another important point, which
is obvious to most presenters, the appropriateness of the material
we show. While most presenters I know would never say
something like "I heard of a guy who got hit by a bus because
he didn't take the appropriate level of care in crossing the street,
isn't that hilarious!" Nonetheless, many presenters would think
nothing of inserting a video like the one mentioned above into a
presentation as an attention-getter. Not only do you run the risk
of having people in the audience who may have been injured
seriously in accidents, or worse, have had relatives or friends
killed that way, you also completely misdirect the attention and
thought patterns of the whole audience. The intended effect,
to get those people who's thoughts were drifting to focus back
on your presentation, will fail. Now those people are focused
on the dangerous drive home, not you. What's more, those who
may have been paying attention to your points may be
reliving the sadness of losing their neighbor to a drunk driver
3. Know your stuff. By using presentation programs as a
supplement to, rather than the substance of an effective
presentation, you insure yourself against the unexpected
failure of almost any part of the presentation. During a
technical seminar in a large hotel banquet room filled with
engineers, I had the misfortune of having my laptop based
slides stop projecting to the screen. After a short bit of humor
to smooth things over and show that I was still in control of
the situation (I did a few shadow puppets with the white light
coming out of the projector- to applause and laughter),
I continued for over fifteen minutes on the topic I was covering.
This also gave me the opportunity to wander out away from my
laptop and into the group, which I love to do. Not only did the
absence of slides not ruin the seminar, it almost enhanced it,
not only for the reasons above, but because it gave the audience
and mea shared humorous experience that I referred back to a
few times for humorous effect (e.g. I jokingly accused one participant,
who asked a strange question, of being the one who had unplugged
the video cable earlier).
This could not have been possible, had the visual part of the
presentation been it's main support.
4. Know your medium. If something goes wrong with the
equipment or presentation, you should have a good feel of
how everything works. I watched in horror as a salesperson,
who was delivering a presentation about a fairly technical product
accidentally stopped the slide presentation and couldn’t get it going
again. The program had not closed down, just gone from "slide view"
to "slide creation view" and simply had to be restarted by clicking
a button on the screen. By not knowing how to do this simple step,
she ruined her credibility and wound up looking sheepishly on as a
member of her staff came up to the podium and restarted her
This is an extreme example, but it also pays to not only know
how to run the program itself, but how to diagnose other technical
problems that may occur. In the presentation to which I referred
above, where the image from my laptop suddenly stopped showing
on the screen, it was helpful to know a bit about the equipment.
During the short break that I called after the outage, I was able to
diagnose that a member of the audience had accidentally kicked
the video cable, dislodging it slightly from my projector. While I
am not an expert of every type of projector on the market, nor
would I want to be, I knew enough about the workings of the system in
general to fix the problem within minutes, rather that waiting helplessly
for the hotel media staff.
Just kidding, but please heed this warning. The most notorious misuse
of presentation programs is putting everything on the screen that you
intend to say, and reading from
the slide. Please take my advice, if your presentation contains all
the words you are going to say, stay home and e-mail them to your
audience where they can read them at their leisure. Slides should be
reserved for visuals that add to the presentation, diagrams, or information
that the audience can take special notes on (e.g. your e-mail address
or telephone number). In fact, slides can be used effectively in hundreds
of ways. I saw one presenter who said something like, "Here are a few of
the laws that govern the operation of a small business today". He then
proceeded to show several slides of laws, rules, and regulations that
increasingly got smaller and smaller in type size and more rapid in
succession. The point was well made that there was a good reason
to have a good business attorney. One way that they should not
be used is as a script to read from. Even bullet points are a bit
suspect, if they have nothing to add to the presentation other
than being a guide for you to follow. In the technical training field,
there are many folks who, because they have some technical
knowledge, assume that they are effective presenters because they
can read from slides. We call such people aptly, slide-readers, and
they can always be counted on to put the audience promptly to sleep.
They fail at communication by using the slides as a crutch, rather than
an enhancement. Slide-readers have done more to damage the viability
of technical presentations than cold coffee.
Your success in delivering an effective, memorable presentation can be
greatly enhanced with presentation software. It will, however rarely come
from integrating new plug-ins, images or Flash content, or by fielding
dozens of slides that contain the verbiage of your entire presentation.
Used wisely, creative elements and bullet slides have their time and
place, but the art of communication involves a much more expansive
universe of interaction. The bottom line is that the purpose of a
presentation isn't to fine-tune your graphics until they look great, or
to display all of your ideas from a screen. The object of an effective
presentation is to communicate important ideas and messages. Using
presentation programs should add to, and not detract from, that goal.
For questions or further information on this article, contact the author
Gary Mull, BS, DTM, MCT, MCSE
Technical Speaker & Consultant,
Mastering Technology, Inc.
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