It is always interesting to have questions from twitter. Thanks to Cian O’Brien for this one.
@ffolliet any tips for title slide of a presentation?
— Cian O’Brien (@CianSOBrien) January 17, 2016
The title of many presentations simply represents a description of the subject. It misses an opportunity to increase the interest of the audience even before the presentation begins and conversely may actually cause disinterest and disconnection from the message even before you begin speaking. A great title is an essential part of a great presentation.
“An assessment of the sensitivity and specificity of focussed abdominal scanning in paediatric blunt abdominal trauma as an adjunct to clinical examination” may be a complete, factual description of the data to be delivered but it isn’t very engaging. It is highly likely you even skipped over part of it as you read the sentence. Alternatively, “FAST scanning sucks” grabs attention, should stimulate intrigue, interest or anger but most importantly engages the audience even if they only to want to disagree with you. Now you have an audience to work with.
The title of your presentation is just as important as the rest of your presentation. It is not just a description. We’ll discuss the title slide in a subsequent post.