Don’t put the cart before the horse.

To develop presentations, one must move away from the concept of looking at the text on a slide and asking how can this be improved by reduction and illustration. This is putting the horse before the cart. Change will only come from a fundamental alteration in approach to the presentation as a whole (p3) , not simply it as a “powerpoint”. 


Once the concept of story (p1) has been addressed, the illustration (p2) of this will follow more naturally and the delivery (p3) will be completely altered. This is in complete contrast to the normal construct of cramming all facts into the slideument and then deciding how to effectively illustrate the text by speaking along to it.

Consider these slides. The topic is clear and there is a logical list of the points that will be discussed. Notes may be easily taken but actually the audience already know all these facts. None of it is new to them. The text will attract their attention and they will read ahead. (you already have). 

The commonest improvement made is to strip out some of the text leaving fewer “bulletpoints”.  

Yet one can easily question the value of the text in itself. Such a slide will take fully minutes to cover the topics listed and adds little to an educated audience apart from something to read. 



Considering the story differently from the very beginning one might challenge the audience to think of a patient they know, of their difficulties related to the problem and how that child was managed.

“This is Nihal’s story….”



To improve your presentation begin with the story, not with the slideument.

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