Summary of "Stop death by PowerPoint"

16/10/06 PowerPoint might have helped you make colourful presentations but 95% of time it bores the audience to death. I mean think about the time when you have sat on a presentation looking at the pretty colours on the screen. PowerPoint is not the best idea to do presentations. Down below you can see 5 tips on how to improve your next PowerPoint presentation. If you follow these tips, guarantee that you will have a much better presentation. 1. Most of the presentation have a title and some information about the topic under it. But you don't do that because that's what the audience already expects from you. Instead you can change the usual layout of the presentation so it will be unexpected and amusing for the audience to look at. 2. If it's hard for you to memorize the entire presentation, then you can just summarize the main facts instead of reading word for word. You can look at the paper for reference but for the most part look at the audience. 3. You don't have to tell them every single information that collected about your topic. Just tell them the brief and most important facts. That keeps the audience from not being bored. Divide your time wisely for each of the slide. For example if your project is 5 minutes long and you have 10 slides, then it's 30 seconds for each slide. 4. Do not read right off of your powerpoint presentation. Instead write the brief facts on a little paper and talk more about it. Try not to look at the screen instead look at the audience. 5. Listen to what the audience is talking about before your presentation. So you can get an idea of what they're expectations are. For example: How long should the presentation be?, Do they want the speaker to have eye context instead of staring at a piece of paper. Also in the question and answer sessions, it might be a good idea to delete some of the main details on the presentation. So when someone asks about it, you can explain it to them more clearly. Sources: T+D; Mar2006, Vol. 60 Issue 3, p20-22, 2p