PowerPoint Presentation Skills

PowerPoint Presentation

It's a fact.

The most interesting and compelling factor of any presentation is YOU!

We've come a long way since the chalk and blackboard days of our grandparents.

Through the whiteboard and Over Head Projector on up to the heights of technology with PowerPoint transitions exploding onto the screen and wowing the audience with special effects.

However, we believe something central to communication between the presenter and the audience got lost along the way.

Somewhere between the screech of chalk on a board and the screech of brakes as the next line of text appears; the human seems to have become secondary to the show.

For that is what a presentation is... a show.

At its most basic level, you as the presenter have a few things to do and one of them is to keep your audience engaged and most importantly awake!

Imagine the scene... a darkened boardroom, comfy leather chairs, that post-lunch feeling has settled in.

It's Friday afternoon, half the audience have already mentally vacated the room and are planning their next holiday or round of golf.

The projector hums soporifically and up pops the agenda slide.

To most audiences, it's almost like an offer of a warm bed and a cup of cocoa.

By the way, people can read much faster than you can talk, so keep your slides short, or give them time to read before you speak.

Audiences generally can't do two things at once.

Above all, do avoid that sure-fire sleep inducer of putting your speaker notes on the slides and then reading them to your audience. (We get to see a lot of the back of your head)

PowerPoint is a marvellous invention.

But it's just another aid, another tool... a very trendy blackboard.

It's you they've come to see.