About a year ago, I SlideShared some simple guidelines on how to create more effective slides using a primarily visual approach. This has proved to be a popular slideshow, with over 20,000 views and 40 embeds in blogs around the 'sphere.
The piece is part of a much larger, 2-day seminar on presentation skills and, as you can imagine, I am constantly adding to it and fiddling with it according to the demands and feedback of the various audiences with whom I work.
Here then is an updated version of the presentation:
I found it interesting that the one piece of feedback I get from SlideShare and embeds is feedback that I never get when I present the piece live - its length. In a blog from a very interesting Physics class in New York, the teacher, Zhanna Glazenburg put up my piece and a number of others and asked her students to vote. Mine won, but it was fascinating to see how many of the students were bothered by the number of slides; something that no audience ever seems to notice when I present it live. I just checked the properties on the current version (with all the drop-in commentary text boxes) and it only has 1,080 words. People see the 128 slide count on SlideShare and automatically panic, but it only takes 5 minutes to zoom through the slides online. [I usually take 8-10 minutes to present it in person.]
Clearly the idea of length, the expectation of a lot of reading, is off-putting to a young audience today. And yet the majority of business and academic presentations that I sit through still follow the Headline / Bullet / Bullet / Bullet model. We've always known that people don't want to read in the presentation or lecture environment. We now know that people can't read-and-listen at the same time and yet there they are - row after row of shiny bullets in presentation after presentation.
If I may put my teacher hat on for a moment: "Considerable room for improvement" is the score I would be awarding most frequently for the PowerPoints I suffer through. Come on folks, don't tell me that you don't still hanker after a gold star ...
Thoughts, comments, amendments, and reality-checks all welcomed.
My wider thoughts on speaking and presenting are under this tag here - rummage around and have some fun.
The piece is part of a much larger, 2-day seminar on presentation skills and, as you can imagine, I am constantly adding to it and fiddling with it according to the demands and feedback of the various audiences with whom I work.
Here then is an updated version of the presentation:
RSS Readers may need to click through to the post.
I found it interesting that the one piece of feedback I get from SlideShare and embeds is feedback that I never get when I present the piece live - its length. In a blog from a very interesting Physics class in New York, the teacher, Zhanna Glazenburg put up my piece and a number of others and asked her students to vote. Mine won, but it was fascinating to see how many of the students were bothered by the number of slides; something that no audience ever seems to notice when I present it live. I just checked the properties on the current version (with all the drop-in commentary text boxes) and it only has 1,080 words. People see the 128 slide count on SlideShare and automatically panic, but it only takes 5 minutes to zoom through the slides online. [I usually take 8-10 minutes to present it in person.]
Clearly the idea of length, the expectation of a lot of reading, is off-putting to a young audience today. And yet the majority of business and academic presentations that I sit through still follow the Headline / Bullet / Bullet / Bullet model. We've always known that people don't want to read in the presentation or lecture environment. We now know that people can't read-and-listen at the same time and yet there they are - row after row of shiny bullets in presentation after presentation.
"Gimme a D! Gimme a U! Gimme an H! Put 'em all together and what have you got? ..."
If I may put my teacher hat on for a moment: "Considerable room for improvement" is the score I would be awarding most frequently for the PowerPoints I suffer through. Come on folks, don't tell me that you don't still hanker after a gold star ...
Thoughts, comments, amendments, and reality-checks all welcomed.
My wider thoughts on speaking and presenting are under this tag here - rummage around and have some fun.
6 comments:
Rowan
You have at least 1 vote :)
Now, do you fancy having a crack at improving my NPV presentation on slideshare?
I'll get you 5 more subscribers if you do, pleeeeaaaaaseee!
AH my favorite type of stupid restriction they would put on is in college. Presentations must be 6slides, 10 slides long etc, what a bunch of crap!
I suppose its drilled into us right from the start.
The judging of a presentation by slide quantity seems awfully like the whole judging work by the amount of hours you spent in the office, or how many hours you spent studying... its silly and childish
Rowan, that's one reason I'm not submitting a slideshow to the contest this year. I don't think it's an accurate representation of what our presentations are like in real life. Who's going to vote for my slideshow when it has so little text that it actually requires a human to present it?
But of course I will go vote for your slideshow!
Hi. Just voted for your presentation in the competition. I've also entered my own presentation 'Cultivating Creativity' and have tried to find the best balance between visuals and text. I am actually extremely anti-text when it comes to presentations, but obviously have to change some of this when dealing with SlideShare. Lisa is right on the money, and unfortunately presentations on SlideShare have to be tailored specifically to being viewed without narration if they are to work in that context.
I like it!
But I would like to see some real presentations using these techniques whose goal was to help sell a service or product (and has been proven successful at doing so).
Can anyone provide any public examples?
Thank you so much for your kind words!
The really neat thing that happened with my students while working with you presentation was exactly what you mentioned: their initial reaction was "Wow! That many slides! You can't possibly expect us to read them all!" Having gone through the slide show they realized that
1. No reading was involved (at least not "reading" in the poorly structured PowerPoint sense of the word)
2. It was fun!
3. It is easy to get the message across with minimal words, BUT it requires putting some thought into what you are doing.
One discussion that happened in the real world (vs. the blogosphere) was the realization that it is not at all easy to create a presentation people want to see. It is easy to slap a bunch of bullet point on the slide and put it up as a "read-as-you-go" prompting system. It is a lot harder to create a presentation that keeps people engaged, interested and focused on what you have to say. Let's just say some of my students developed some appreciation for what good teachers do every day.
Another fund side-effect: they will never see a PowerPoint presentation the same way again. :) I got the following report a few days ago: "Mrs. G, we had to watch a presentation on how to make a Power Point in another class! Guess what: she hit all the points!" and then they clarified that statement: "She did everything you told us NOT to do." :)
Another school year, another group of students..! More PowerPoint instruction. I can't wait!
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