Death by PowerPoint

 How many of us have gone to a meeting or conference and suddenly, a PowerPoint presentation starts to be shown. There are so many people that try and put everyone on the slides instead of just those few key points.

Something that is very important to think about when you are preparing a PowerPoint presentation is how much information you should be putting on a slide. The less is more rules apply here because the less words you can put on a slide the better. Keep the slides to only the key points and not every word you are going to be saying during the presentation.

Here is an example of an about me done in two different ways, and think about what would look better on a slide:

About Me

-          Small business co-owner

-          Project Manager

-          Bookkeeper

-          Enjoys crafting as a hobby

 

About Me

-          Small business co-owner of Konecny Consulting Inc

-          Project Manager and have my CAPM, which is Certified Associate Project Manager

-          Bookkeeper and I have my CPB, which is Certified Professional Bookkeeper

-          Enjoy crafting as a hobby and I enjoy doing a lot of the needle arts, such as knitting, cross stitch and others

As you can see, I have shown two different about me slides that I might use when I am giving a presentation myself. There is only one that I would use, and it would be the first one because those are the key talking points and I can add all the extra details when I am speaking. Besides keeping the words to a minimum, I would also try and keep the font that I am using very simple and easy to read.

When you are preparing a presentation, you must think about the background colour of your slides as well as the colour of the words on the screen. The lighter the background the better, and try and stick with darker colours for the words. Do not try and put light colour words on a light background because that is extremely hard to read. Also, something else that you need to think about is all of those GIF’s and flashing things that you add to your presentation. These can affect people in so many ways. Keep any GIF as a quick thing and don’t leave it up on the screen for very long because you could be risking the health of someone else.

After you have finished preparing your presentation, put it up onto your screen, but then stand back from where you normally sit and see what the presentation looks like. Do you have to add more pages because of your talking points, or do you need to increase the size of your font so that people at the back of the room can see what you are trying to say.

PowerPoint or any slide presentation system can be a useful tool but using it wisely is important. The keep it simple rule applies and if you are trying to show a screenshot on a slide, make sure that you aren’t showing the entire screen just what is key to what you are talking about.

Example:

To reboot your computer, go to the window button, click on it and then select the power button which is on the right of the window.

Trying to read that from a distance would be a real challenge, especially if you have that at the top of the slide and the rest of the slide is blank. So, remember any presentation tool can be useful if used wisely and make sure you have done a spell check of the entire presentation before you give it as you wouldn’t want to be embarrassed because of some silly spelling errors. The last point I want to make is once you have completed your presentation have someone else look at it and see what they think because they might spot errors that you haven’t.