I just spotted this great keynote delivered by Guy Kawasaki (previous Apple guy, now entrepreneur and speaking guru, How to Change The World). I know nothing about entrepreneurship nor do I want to start up a company but I found this video of his keynote totally mesmerising. His pace is great, slides are good (even with bullet points!) and he holds the audience’s attention. He is natural, informal, uses no technical jargon and his message is crystal clear. If you are preparing to give a talk I recommend you watch this and learn from someone inspirational.
Guy Kawasaki, gifted and engaging public speaker
February 8th, 2010 · Communication, Designer worth noting, Guy Kawasaki, Public Speaking
More on how to end a presentation
February 8th, 2010 · Concluding the pesentation, Presentation skills, Presentation style, Public Speaking
One of the nice things about WordPress is that you can see what people are searching for online which brings them to your site. The commonest search string which makes people end up at my site is “how to end a presentation”. I have to say, with all the posts I have written, the vast majority of people are searching mainly for ways to conclude their presentations. You would think that, having managed to get started, then delivering your whole talk and negotiating your way through all those slides, people would be relaxed about the conclusion. But clearly this is not so. Why?
Some of your audience will have drifted off during your pitch so I guess one very important aspect of your presentation is making sure the audience remembers a few key points, if nothing else, from your presentation. If you are marketing, or telling someone about a scientific breakthrough you don’t care if they can’t remember the fine details but you DO want them to retain a few points.
How to end memorably?
This is tricky. I would never use more than one Conclusion slide. I have seen people use 2 or even 3. But that’s just lazy. Keep it to a single slide and try not to cram it full of detail. Reinforce 3 points from your pitch. If you have more than that they will switch off (I know this is a generalisation but it’s true for most audiences). As soon as they see “Conclusions” they start packing up. Their brains will be half way out of the room. They put things in their bags, and sit up straight, ready to leave the room, have coffee, chat, whatever. It’s an audience wake up call! So you only have a very brief window to convey your parting shots — so keep them brief, simple, with as few words as possible. Use the same words as you have used throughout the talk. Don’t ever introduce new material! Your parting slide should simply bring together everything you have been saying throughout your presentation.
Do you leave the Conclusion slide on the screen when you have finished? I still prefer a plain black slide which helps focus the attention back on YOU. If you leave a slide with words or a picture or (God forbid) a “Thank You!” slide, their attention will wander to that and they will pay less attention to you. Having sensory deprivation (namely the black slide) puts the focus fairly and squarely on you. The only thing they can do is listen to you.
You can then move on to the Q&A section which we can deal with at another stage.
Has anyone used Prezi for a presentation?
February 1st, 2010 · Communication, Web presentation
I came across a new platform for presentations called Prezi. Basically this is a Flashed-based program that can be used off-line or on-line to create a kind of storyboard for your presentations. The idea is that you put down all your thoughts for your speech on a single page then link the titles, text and images and when you click “forward” the text slides to the center of the screen then off again once you click forward again.
The beauty of this program is that it gets you away from the PowerPoint/Keynote stack of cards concept and gives you a huge amount of freedom. Visually it is very impressive, though I have not actually delivered a presentation using the software. But I have had a lot of fun playing around with the various tools and have half-created a couple of talks which I will give using Prezi.
There’s an online version and a standalone version. The pricing is a little complex but seems reasonable. I would like an extended demo of the standalone version so I can use it and maybe write about it in my next book. Perhaps the Prezi team will let me have an extension to the 30-day trial (strong hint).
Why not give the free online version a go and see if you like it more than Powerpoint. Let me know how you get on.
I have provided a still shot and a movie of a Prezi show below.
Enjoy!
great presentation thank you slides
→ No CommentsTags: Flash presentation·mind mapping presentation·on line presentations·web-based presentation
Keynote Pro templates
December 13th, 2009 · Apple Keynote, Designer worth noting
I normally stay away from templates for PowerPoint and Keynote but Keynote Pro has some gorgeous pre-made templates if you need inspiration for an important presentation. I have bought a few of these and particularly like the “OM 08” template for Apple Keynote. You can use the blue or green version, but both are very clean designs (although the font is a bit thin for me so I changed to Myriad Pro in the master slides).
Another example of bad “corporate” slides
December 5th, 2009 · Bad PowerPoint, Bad design
I came across a presentation today while browsing the web and I had to capture a couple of the slides as examples of poor slide design. I have disguised the origin of the slides and removed the company logo which appeared at the bottom of each slide.
These are really grim because they are totally overloaded with text, which is too small. They also use bad clip art that has nothing to do with the actual content of the slide.
Also, the font is Times New Roman which must be about the worst font to use in a presentation.
It drives home the point that bullet points should be banned from PowerPoint slides!
Bad cheesy clip art
November 20th, 2009 · Bad PowerPoint, Bad design, Images
I found this in my collection (no, it’s not mine, but it is a colleague’s but he won’t be reading this so I’m safe). He has used a Spongebob figure in a scientific presentation. In my view this fails because (1) the clipart is very low resolution so looks very amateur and (2) because it’s redundant. You don’t need a picture of Spongebob to understand the concept of a sponge.
So in my view this slide is spoiled by the irrelevant and “humorous” (not) cartoon. It’s a bad slide anyway – the artwork could have been vastly improved with a little effort.
If in doubt, when it comes to clipart – DON’T!
→ No CommentsTags: Artwork·Bad slide design·Clipart·PowerPoint
Using iPhone 3GS as presentation remote
November 12th, 2009 · Apple Keynote, iPhone presenter apps
I gave a couple of talks today and decided to try the app Pointer instead of my usual remote. I was using my MacBook Pro with my presentation in Keynote. However this app does not work only with Keynote – it is a great remote for PowerPoint, too. [Read more →]
Found another great presentation blog
November 12th, 2009 · Uncategorized
Lee Potts runs a great blog called Breaking Murphy’s Law (whatever can go wrong will go wrong) [Read more →]
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Presentation error:
Don’t use other peoples’ slides!
November 11th, 2009 · PowerPoint, Things to avoid, Uncategorized
I took a short cut today and used some data supplied by a colleague. [Read more →]
