Prepare for failure
SO, the Chair has introduced you and you stride up to the stage, there’s a flicker behind you and your title slide appears on the 20m high screen. You press the remote and everything goes black, for a second then…
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Tag Archive: p2
Simple design tip #1
Justify your title, don’t center it. I know that’s what the template does but that means there are probably 20 million just like it being delivered today. The centre justification draws the eyes into the middle of the slide and…
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I can’t see the wood for the trees
I’ve never quite been sure of the derivation of the phrase. A perfect example of its use is in a slide such as this. There is simply so much “going on” in this image that the audience will be unable…
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It’s .pptx not .docx
A common mistake in attempting to deliver a (scientific) paper is the failure to recognise the difference between a document and a presentation. They are not the same. Perhaps the nomenclature is the start of the problem but an oral…
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Quick copy this down!
When making an academic presentation it is often valuable to quote the literature. Quote means to speak. Don’t write it down, it is not valuable.There is an increasing tendency to show references in a slide or series of slides. The…
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It’s not about the slides
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…
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One message per slide
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…
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That’s a paper, not a slide
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….
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