[discostu]

Unless you actually have something visual to present, don’t. Really PowerPoint is what happens when a bunch of nerds who really don’t like attention suddenly get told to start public speaking. They figure out a way to speak with the lights off and everybody looking at a screen instead of them.

[DoodleBob]

Every public speaking course/seminar I attended had the same message:

- if you MUST use ppt, there should be as few slides as possible, ideally very spartan with text but relying on solid graphs or visuals that have a high degree of information content.

-YOU, the speaker, are the king (or queen if you're a woman) of content. YOU must come prepared, with fact and figures memorized and deleted breed closely, clearly, and where appropriate.

If you attend Edward Tufte's seminars you get this in poster form. Probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn, this map by Charles Joseph Minard portrays the losses suffered by Napoleon's army in the Russian campaign of 1812. Beginning at the Polish-Russian border, the thick band shows the size of the army at each position. The path of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in the bitterly cold winter is depicted by the dark lower band, which is tied to temperature and time scales.

This is a benchmark for delivering a story in a graphic. Alternatively, a grid prison of numbers in ppt and someone droning on, is the death of business.

[DoodleBob]

Sorry...YOU, the speaker, are the king (or queen if you’re a woman) of content. YOU must come prepared, with fact and figures memorized and delivered SLOWLY, concisely, clearly, and ONLY where appropriate.