LOST IN MASTICATION

Here’s a simple slideshow that I gave to a board of executives this past week (sans audio speaking points):

I’ve designed hundreds of presentations – some for others, and many that I present myself.  I’ve also sat through many that have been boring, unmemorable, difficult to follow, and even incomprehensible (often times in a classroom).

In this era of PowerPoint and Keynote, many presenters have taken to “hiding” behind their presentations by listing too many bullet points – so that readers are often focused on reading what is on the slide, and not listening to the speaker.  Worse yet, the bullet point list on the slides often becomes the presenter’s script.

At the risk of evangelizing Lawrence Lessig too much, I yet again point to him as an example.  The Lessig style of presentation takes key words and graphics to emphasize his talking points.  The visual presentation is merely a supplement to his talk, not vice versa.  See his style in work on a talk about Free Culture.*

My focus is often on marketing and communications, so I tend to use more imagery and less words than Lessig, but here are key rules that I’ve learned about slide-show presentations that I hope others will consider:

1. Less is more. The less words there are on the screen, the more engaged the audience can be with a speaker.  When the slides are filled with bullet statements, I am distracted by reading the presentation.  I want to hear the presenter, otherwise, I could read a book or paper.  Likewise, I want to be heard as a presenter because what I’m saying ought to be more engaging than lines of text.
2. Help visualize the important themes. Lessig does this well by extracting single words, phrases, or graphics per slide.  You hear these words and phrases as part of his talk and the visualization puts emphasis on take-aways.  Visuals serve two other purpose: to know that we are on the same page when I am describing something familiar (or unfamiliar), and as a mental signal that I’ve transitioned in my talk.
3. Don’t over animate. Newer versions of PowerPoint, in particular, have fancy entries and exits.  While simple transitions aid in easing the eye, animations don’t do much but distract.  Bouncing letters and spinning charts just take the audience’s attention away from what the speaker is saying.
4. Embed. Often times presentations require links to external media.  Save time and distraction for your audience by embedding – whether it be a webpage or videolink. The less switching in and out of your presentation the smoother and cleaner the presentation.
5. You are the presentation. Not the slideshow.  Speak for yourself, and let the presentation be your accessory, not your crutch.

*If you like learning, particularly about copyright and imapct on social media, I highly recommend watching the Free Culture video in full.

I would have loved, wait… LOVED to have been able to attend the Web2.0 Summit.  In fact I had an invite to meet someone there, but alas real life got in the way.

Moya Watson gives a great recap on her blog.  Here are some highlights that I enjoyed from the recap:

Web meets the president

“Were it not for the Internet, Obama would not have been elected President,” said Arianna Huffington in Friday’s great panel, The Web and Politics (with John Heilemann, Arianna Huffington, Gavin Newsom, and Joe Trippi). “It wasn’t the age of the candidate that mattered in this election,” she continued, “It was the age of the ideas.”

Web meets (dirty) politics

We’ve just experienced the terrible flipside of “truth into our living rooms,” which is that the Internet can also be used, with devastating effectiveness, to spread attacks and lies into our living rooms. Here are some specific examples from the fight against Proposition 8 — all true:

• Videos propagated on YouTube in which the official “Yes” campaign equated gays with Hitler
• No On Prop 8’s Web site attacked by denial-of-service (which we overcame mightily, thanks to our Web techs)
• Personal attacks from people in the blogosphere throughout open, unmoderated threads (when another side might have had closed threads)
• Videos propagated by the official “Yes” campaign using children without their parents’ agreement or permission
• Gay people (and straight alike) getting anti-gay “Yes” ads served on their site because the yes campaign invested heavily in Google AdWords

Web meets TV

“TV is the biggest medium in America that hasn’t been democratized yet,” said @ev. “Twitter changes how people connect with people – if you expand that to a very large user base, it can change culture.” Pointing out that it’s not just social, Evan continued, “it has potential to see aggregate real-time information, like during the election.” Add Current TV to the mix and what happens?

“With Twitter and this broadcast model together, what happens is that you can get alternate viewpoints WHILE they’re being broadcast” -@ev

Green is the new Web

Calling himself a “recovering politician,” Al Gore took stage late at the summit to a standing ovation, saying that the “redeeming quality of the election” was that “all humans are created equal” and that this “would not have been possible without the Internet.”

Web meets the iPhone

AND more…. read the whole blog post and video/photos links here.

Hoping to get to the Web2.0 Expo in the spring.  Anyone wanna’ go with??