Sep 30 2010

A Comedy of PowerPoint Errors

I'm not laughing when it comes to PowerPoint errors. (c) Thinkstock

I was recently at a conference where I attended a breakout session delivered by a well-respected thought leader. The presenter was very articulate and well-versed in her area of expertise. At the beginning of her slides I started to spot some unexpected mistakes in her PowerPoint slides, and I decided to start noting her gaffes for fun.

As the presentation progressed, I came to realize that I was witnessing a comedy of PowerPoint errors — except nobody in her audience was laughing. Based on her industry experience the presenter could have been engaging without her PowerPoint slides; however, her poor-quality presentation ended up interfering with her message rather than reinforcing it. Continue reading “A Comedy of PowerPoint Errors”

Tags: death by PowerPoint, errors, mistakes

Comments (9)

Aug 07 2009

31 Flavors of PowerPoint – Part II

Just one flavor of PowerPoint? (c)iStockPhoto / cnicbc

In my previous blog post, I discussed the different flavors of PowerPoint that exist. It’s not just vanilla or even double-chocolate fudge brownie. We need to accept the fact that there are multiple flavors — at least 31 — if not more. Continue reading “31 Flavors of PowerPoint – Part II”

Tags: budget, consistency, content-bias, control, death by PowerPoint, design, presentation design, Presentation Zen, presenter-bias, rules, strategic, tactical, time, venue

Comments (5)

May 02 2009

How to Reduce and Simplify Bullet Points in PowerPoint

Long bullet points illogical?

How many times have you been cramming to prepare a PowerPoint presentation and it dawns on you that the bullet points in your slides are way too text heavy? It is very common for people to “brain dump” all of their ideas or thoughts into “stream of consciousness” bullet points as they create slides.

However, this creative technique becomes a problem when you fail to revisit your bullet points and simplify them so that your audience isn’t staring at a wall of text. It can be challenging to reduce and simplify what you wrote — but it needs to be done. Continue reading “How to Reduce and Simplify Bullet Points in PowerPoint”

Tags: bullet points, bulleted lists, death by PowerPoint, Nancy Duarte, Presentation Zen, simplify, Slide:ology, text

Comments (21)

Apr 07 2009

Attack of the Bad Presenters! Part II

In my previous article, I discussed how we encounter several different types of bad presenters. I covered the first five presenter types in Part I, and now I’m going to profile the next five naughty presenters. As I mentioned in the last article, conduct a little self-evaluation and survey of your peers to ensure you don’t fall into one of these “bad presenter” types. Continue reading “Attack of the Bad Presenters! Part II”

Tags: death by PowerPoint, Presentation Delivery, presenters

Comments (0)

Apr 03 2009

Attack of the Bad Presenters! Part I

After you have sat through a few hundred PowerPoint presentations, you start to see patterns in the presenters that you encounter. Hopefully, you have come across some truly inspired presenters that delivered memorable, meaningful presentations. Unfortunately, for every one great presenter you stumble upon, you may run into 15-20 bad presenters along the way (not including 30-50 average presenters). Continue reading “Attack of the Bad Presenters! Part I”