Stay Away from Delivering Bad PowerPoint Presentations

A couple of years ago, PCWorld had compiled a slideshow of some of the worst PowerPoint presentations ever made. Head over and see the entire slideshow. What do you see?

The slideshow comprises of classic examples of bad slides – too many colours, too many bullets, too much text or simply too complicated. See slide 6 – you’ll know what we mean by TOO MUCH TEXT’. In an article in Fast Company Article titled ‘How to Avoid Making a Bad Presentation’, authors DAN & CHIP HEATH say that “Great presentations are mysteries, not encyclopaedia entries.” Don’t ever cram your slide with text or too many bullets. If you put too much information on the slide, your audience will read it before you get to your point, and you will lose their attention.
Seth Godin writes in the article Really Bad PowerPoint “make slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them. Create slides that demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you’re saying is true not just accurate” Use you slides as Visual Cues. Use images that convey your message – don’t just fill slides with stock images for the sake of putting in an image.

Inc magazine has a succinct five point slideshow which gives useful pointers on how to avoid making and thus giving bad presentations. As they say, “Don’t leave out the emotion”. Human beings can only connect to the speaker if they feel that he or she is also like them, with similar feelings, and someone who will understand them at their level. No one wants to listen to a robot right?
Here’s a set of guidelines to follow to make your PowerPoint ‘to-the-point’ – an article written by SANDHYA NANKANI and HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO in the New York Times Blog http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/point-counter-point-how-to-use-and-avoid-misusing-powerpoint/. Also take a look at our blog for some of the PowerPoint best practices that you can follow.