The YouBlog

Gone Fishin'

GREAT QUOTE from Henry David Thoreau: "Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not the fish they are after."
        And what are you really after with your presentations or sales calls or press releases and such? Is it to hear yourself talk or see your words in print, or is it to affect and influence someone else?
        Start from that and work backwards, and you'll be far more effective than if you just hurl your line out there and hope someone takes your bait.

Let's Talk About Transitions

OOOH, THE TEMPTATIONS! All those clever, stylish, even dramatic transition effects just waiting for you to go "Yesssss." Whirling cubes, starbursts, solar flares, and so on. The possibilities are endless.
        Just one teeny little problem here — most of them should be avoided at all costs.
        That's right. Unless a particular transition effect perfectly merges with what you've just said, or what you're about to show, then it adds nothing but visual noise to your presentation. Worse, it stops your audience's train of thought, while they subconsciously process what that transition was about.
        The excitement in your presentation should come from the ideas you're sharing or the vision you're painting. It shouldn't come from some meaningless visual trick.

So what do you do?
In most cases, just go to the next slide without adding a transition effect. That's the basic model for film and TV, and that's what your audience is used to. Sure, film editors regularly apply a quick dissolve for some scenes, so if you really feel the urge to add an effect, use that. Leave all the fancy tricks to everyone else. I promise you, your audience won't miss that stuff.
        Meanwhile, think about how you go from one slide to the next. Do you just flip to the slide? Do you say, "And on this next slide..." ? Or do you set up the idea that's coming up, and then change slides? That's the way you should go most of the time.

Handled well, transitions can build the pace of your presentation and further engage your audience. Handled poorly, they can kill your rhythm and distract or distance your audience.

Don't Take the Easy Route

RAISE YOUR HAND if you use a slide template. Okay, it's a trick question — even blank slides rely on a template of, well, blank slides. Templates are good in providing a consistent look to a presentation, which helps your audience concentrate on your message, not on abrupt changes in slide design. (There are, of course, things to be wary of. Read this and this.)
        Templates make the task of creating a presentation easier, but they also can make us lazy. Worse, they can even weaken how we present our ideas, by giving us a seductively simple — and potentially ineffective — form into which to pour our thoughts.
        Need a new slide? Just click the "New Slide" button. Then fill in the box that says "slide title" and start bashing in your bullets. (Or filling in some other prefab form. Pie chart, anyone?)
        Result? Another potentially good presentation gone bad.

A first step in a better direction
Let's look at that "slide title" bit. It seems logical. We want to label what the slide is about, so the audience will understand what's coming up and we'll know what to talk about, right?
        But who is giving the presentation? The slide deck or you?
        Let's go back to the basic purpose of using slides, which is to help illuminate or explain things for which words aren't enough — or to feature the three or four bits you absolutely want your audience to remember.
        If you buy that premise, then individual slide titles are virtually irrelevant. They become the equivalent of saying, "Here's what I'm going to tell you now." That just gets in the way of the story you're telling and risks talking down to your audience.
        Slide titles can sometimes help set a tone for the content within, or can anchor a series of slides on a particular theme (if you're doing builds and such). But in those cases, the title should be only one to three words in length, no more.
        And if you're thinking you need slide titles for the print-outs of your presentation you plan to leave behind, then please read Powerpoint ≠ Word.
        So leave the titles out and just paint your vision. Your audience will be more tuned in every time.