As Lance Armstrong famously entitled his book on “winning” the Tour de France, “It’s not about the bike.” So, with presentations, it is not about the slides. They are important. Without the slides it is just a talk. Ultimately the…
In the last blogpost I suggested the best place to start improving #presentationskills is by deleting the slide set. The rationale behind that statement was not to suggest that presentations should be done without supportive media but in order for…
I received a question via Twitter about #presentationskills and where I might focus beginning the journey of improvement. As with so many things, the more I considered the issue the deeper the answer became. I think a good place to…
As conference season gets into full swing more and more presenters are showing audiences that their thoughts are built upon previous work. That is often very important. What is not necessary is to show a screenshot of that journal article.…
Simple design changes in the supportive media make dramatic differences to the audience’s perception of value in a presentation. The overall value of a presentation (p cubed) is the product of the story (p1) x the supportive media (p2) x…
This is the Mona Lisa, probably one of the most famous images in the world. Putting a frame around her doesn’t make her any more amazing. Putting a load of white space around her would detract from her. There is…
There is no place in a presentation for apologies. There should be nothing in your preparation that would cause you to apologise and nothing in your delivery that you should apologise for. Apologies are an expression of contrition and of…
My drive is for presentations to be remembered, so that the amazing things people have to share and teach and talk about will not be “lost in time like tears in rain.” One way to help the audience is to have…
For the benefit of clarity, I am not against text in presentations. The goal of the perfect presentation (p2) is NOT simply to eradicate all text. The goal of the perfect presentation is to augment the story (p1) and add…
We look past them, we try to avoid eye contact or politely but with a degree of embarrassment refuse their request. Our reasons for doing so are multiple but the reality is most of us could spare more than we…