Do your presentations create WOW! or ho hum?

December 18, 2008 by Doug Mitchell

Abhay Parekh has a nice short list of presentation attention getters on the Manage Smarter website. I must say we’ve come a long way in this area at create WOW media but we’re always looking to get better.

We’re most enthused by number one on the list and that’s:

Show, rather than tell.

By leveraging graphics/imagery to assist your tale you allow the audience to follow YOU and YOUR MESSAGE vs. try and read something on a slide. Still, today, I cannot understand how people can simply get up and read me what’s on their slides. That’s when I hope for a technology failure and could get some “from the heart” talk.

Another favorite was number 5:

Know when to stop

In my blogging for business class, I prepared about double the amount of slides/information I actually got through because of the unbelievably valuable QA sprinkled throughout the class. That was most valuable to the class according to surveys. Lesson learned. Cut back on slides…more real world examples.