If you look at our home page, you’ll see a link to a presentation to which I contributed some time ago. I included it on the home page for two reasons. First, the presentation gives corporations some tips on implementing web conference technology. Second, it gives everyone a good feel for the Adobe Connect interface which is important because Adobe Connect is part of one of my service offerings.
However, when one of my clients looked at the presentation, he emailed me a blunt critique. “That presentation was awful. It violated every practice you preach.” In my defense, I didn’t come up with the structure of the presentation. I only contributed a couple of slides along with the moderator and the co-presenter. But there was no getting around it. My client was right. While the presentation conveyed the necessary information, it did indeed violate at least one key rule of good presentations.
In short, the pitch suffers from “death by bullets”. Every slide is wordy, with bullet item after bullet item. It was great for me, my co-presenter and the moderator because we didn’t need lots of notes off to the side. Every point was right there to remind us what to say. But your presentation is NOT a cheat-sheet for you. It is supposed to engage your audience. I hate to admit that many audience members may have have had the same reaction that my client did. Boring, stodgy, unimaginative.
Will I remove the link from my home page? No. Now it serves three purposes. First, it informs about the value of web conferencing. Second it demonstrates the Adobe Connect platform and third, it teaches how NOT to construct a presentation!
Jon Thomas of Presentation Advisors has put together five key tips for creating great presentations. I suggest you read it.
Matt,
The first step towards effective presentation design is admitting that there is a problem with the status quo. You’ve now accomplished that! Not that you are, but don’t beat yourself up about it. I have plenty of old presentations I created that break every rule of effective presentation design – but that’s because back then I didn’t know any better. Bad presentations were all I ever saw!!
Things are changing now, luckily. More people are realizing how ineffective bullet points are and how wildly effective imagery can be for information recall, which is the whole point of a sales pitch, right? That is, to persuade, and to persuade you have to inform, and that information needs to be recalled.
The link to my post is much appreciated!
Jon Thomas
Presentation Advisors
Jon, thanks for stopping by the blog. The funny thing about the presentation in question is that it was a collaborative effort and if I’d had my wits about me I would have influenced the co-presenters to do a better job. Expedience and going with the flow took precedence. Of course, there is a price to be paid for expedience, namely an audience bored to death.
Thanks again for dropping in and don’t be a stranger!