What your audience is thinking

Don't mind me dawg - but I finished reading all your bullet points before you had fully explained the first one and now I'm twittering all my friends about what a lame presentation this is ...

Andrew Lightheart from the excellent Real. Smart. Now. blog, which conveys honest-to-goodness presentation superpowers upon IT professionals has shared some thoughts he twittered during a morning of presentations at the IDC Cloud Computing Conference. Some of my faves:

• If you’re using a non-standard chart, explain the significance of the graphics in general, before talking about the specifics.

• If you say your video is short, make it under 120 seconds. Otherwise say how long it is in minutes.

• If you ARE talking to a tech/specialist audience DO use jargon as a shortcut.

• Repeat after me: Teaching is the new selling.

• Multiple bullet points make me go ‘Ok, what’s your point?!’

And the coup de grace:

• If you don’t want to go through all the POINTS why put them on the SLIDE? Didn’t have time to prepare things for me? So kind.
  

Click on through and enjoy the rest. And while you're there, be smart - subscribe to Andrew's blog. A more on-target set of posts on the practicalities of business presenting you will not find.

[08.00 on a Saturday morning? A bit out of character I realise. But we got a puppy and guess who gets to do the early morning housetraining? Deep sigh.]