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The Problem with Presentations

Most presentations flat-out stink. 

We've all witnessed the following scene: the presenter stands stock still in a darkened room reading from his or her slides in a mumbled monotone. Looking around the room, you notice everyone is asleep, playing minesweeper, or checking email. The presenter doesn't want to be there, and neither does the audience. No one is inspired, and the morale in the room is terrible.

Multiply the average hourly salary in that room by the number of people, then multiply that number by the hour or two (or three) the presentation lasts. How much money did your organization throw away? 

What bad presentations do for your organization:
The Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster (Cognitive scientist Edward Tufte's explanation on how improper use of PowerPoint may have caused the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster)

Badly designed presentations teach less (Researchers at the University of New South Wales find that if an audience hears and sees the same words at the same time, they receive less information than if they only hear or only read the information)

PowerPoint wastes $250 million dollars a day? (Presentation coach David Paradi does a back-of-the-envelope calculation for how much time and money PowerPoint wastes each day)

Learn to Present your Ideas

  • Communicate your complex ideas clearly.

  • Create slides that support your message, not obfuscate it.

  • Generate handouts and useful reference documents - never give someone a copy of your slides again!

  • Avoid corporate-speak, acronyms and jargon.

  • Craft presentations that inform, inspire, and impress your audiences.

  • Receive a free evaluation of your organization's slide templates and/or a template that makes nearly any presentation look better.

  • Practice speaking before your peers and receive feedback on your presenting style.

Package Details

  • Evaluation of your organization's existing templates

  • 1 hr consultation regarding presentation types and styles used by your organization - used as basis for lecture and lab customization

  • 1 hr lecture

  • 2 20-minute presentation lab sessions (max 10 attendees per lab). Participants in the presentation lab present short lectures and evaluate each other.

Class Resources

RenewBlog's Presentation Tag: all RenewBlog entries on presentations.

Good examples

In the era of ubiquitous streaming Internet video, observing excellent presentations has never been easier or cheaper. You can search YouTube or the Internet Archive for excellent talks of all kinds (try searching for Lawrence Lessig, Merlin Mann, Cory Doctorow, or Barack Obama), below are some other excellent places to start:

TED: hundreds of 20-minute presentations on science, art, politics and more from leaders in their respective fields, Nobel Prize winners, presidents, etc.

@Google Talks: Authors, presidential candidates, policy wonks, and more hold court on the Google campus for an hour each. Pay special attention to the Q&A sessions at the end - note how each person handles difficult questions from the (very astute) Google crowd.

As you watch these presentations: pay attention to what speaking and presentation styles you like the most, what slides work best, what slides don't work so well, and why? How did the speaker capture your attention and emotions? Find and use gestures that are appropriate for your subject and speaking style.

Rules of Thumb

Seth Godin's Really Bad PowerPoint

Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 Rule

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