A presentation is someone telling a story. it's an emotionel Endeavour, not a presentation of facts. if it was you could just write a report or send out a memo. As a presenter you need to bear this in mind.
Like any other story it should be engaging, interesting, fun and memorable. It should also have a beginning and an end. If you think of your slides in this context things change. Their goal is to amplify your point, make a technical point clearer, or something Else to underline what you're saying. The main focus should be the speaker, not the slides.
If you want to see a true Master look at some of Steve Jobs keynotes. There are three kind of slides:
- pictures to show what the product looks like.
- short bullets to give an overview (a phone, an iPod, an internet communications device)
A presentation is someone telling a story. it's an emotionel Endeavour, not a presentation of facts. if it was you could just write a report or send out a memo. As a presenter you need to bear this in mind.
Not always. For instance, a scientist gives oral presentations at conferences, and goes to see oral presentations by others, because verbal communication with visual aids is a more effective form of communication than written. I can get a better idea of what someone else is doing by having them explain it to me for ten minutes than by spending ten minutes reading their words on paper... even though I can read words far faster than they can speak 'em.
I hate being overwhelmed by slides, so I've tried adapting some of these sorts of techniques to scientific talks, but I just can't. I'm not selling something, I'm trying to communicate huge slabs of information in limited time. A talk with visual aids has a greater information bandwidth than one without.
Besides, redundant text on your slides is an important insurance policy, to make sure you don't forget to say something. If you've got time to practice your talk over and over then this isn't important, but if you write your slides two days before the talk and practice it once in your hotel room then they're helpful.
Like any other story it should be engaging, interesting, fun and memorable. It should also have a beginning and an end. If you think of your slides in this context things change. Their goal is to amplify your point, make a technical point clearer, or something Else to underline what you're saying. The main focus should be the speaker, not the slides.
If you want to see a true Master look at some of Steve Jobs keynotes. There are three kind of slides:
- pictures to show what the product looks like.
- short bullets to give an overview (a phone, an iPod, an internet communications device)
- simple graphs to show a point or a trend.