Latest Posts

The 5 Ps of Presentation

In order to improve the value of a presentation one must construct an excellent story (p1), design appropriate and supportive media (p2) but ultimately all of this will come to naught if you fail to deliver it (p3). For many,…
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Can we use just a little bit of text? Please?

The abiding question on many lips in trying to improve presentation is, “Can we just use a little bit of text on our slides?” Of course you can. You can also break the speed limit a little bit. You can…
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Why we must change presentations.

People ask my why I get so enthused about presentations. My answer is that stories are important. Through them we gain chances of understanding, change and emotion. The current means of communication (with powerpoint) hugely limit these opportunities.In the closing…
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Thank you for your excellent presentation. I very much enjoyed it.

Thank you for your Christmas present. It was exactly what I wanted. Thank you for the date. I will call you. Thank you for your comment. I will bear that in mind. Thank you for stopping by. It was no…
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How much data is too much data?

I recently had the privilige of presenting to the Dept. Paediatric Urology at Toronto Sick Kids Hospital. They were generally taken with the idea of a new method of presenting but one colleague was concerned that scientific presentations required the…
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Your powerpoint is not an autocue

One of the reasons some speakers are unwilling to change their presentation style is that their supportive media (p2) is actually an autocue; they simply read from it. This fails on many levels.Speaking in public is nerve wracking and never…
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How to “do” a presentation #htdap

How to do a presentation is an ordered list. Please follow the steps, in order. I think you’ll find the result both illuminating and rewarding. There are lots of links to other posts that deal with the issues in a…
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Less is more

Less words.Less complexity.Less facts.Less bulletpoints.Less datapoints.Less graphs.Less clip art.Less annotation.Less slides.Less rambling.Less apologising.Less time.Less is more.

Bad presentations are your fault.

I had the misfortune yesterday to sit through five presentations, which as a group, were possibly the worst presentations I have seen in many years. Uniformly, none of the presenters had a point to their talks, they simply recited a…
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Trees, not chains.

Organising knowledge requires a conceptual tree of information, not a chain.The structure of a concept is complex, not linear. Presenting knowledge in a linear fashion limits the ability of an audience to process this structure and therefore limits understanding. Linkage…
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