On presentations

21, July 2007 in Marketing, Office Woes

Back in NP, we did alot of project presentations. One of the most common faults of our presentations was that we had too many words paragraphs on one slide. The teachers whine about it all the time. But we just kept creating crappy slides.

I am guilty of crappy presentation slides because I need the key points and words on the slides to help prompt my thought process and help script what I should say. And more often than not, them bloody points add up to ALOT. So I get them hideous, full-of-words kinda slides too.

So you’d think, aiya we students suck, the industry professionals do it damn zai and all. But NOOOOOO, you should check out our VPs man. Their slides are full of words with little formatting that make them the worst slides ever. And all their presentations hardly blew me away. Pfft. I guess good presentations don’t determine your career success then.

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On a side note, I think I could get used to board room life. The room’s nice, the leather chairs are comfy.. And it felt quite good to participate in a meeting with 10 over people comprising of the MD, VPs, AVPs and managers. Guess that’s the best part of my low-paying temp job so far – I get good exposure and opportunities, not the way a typical nineteen-year-old temp gets treated, I think!

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Seth Godin wrote a really good blog post on Really Bad Powerpoint and offered some tips:

“Here are the five rules you need to remember to create amazing Powerpoint presentations:

1. No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.
2. No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images.
3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions.
4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
5. Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.”

And since most powerpoint presentations suck, I think we need to start young. So the next time I’m ever going to have to do a powerpoint presentation, I’d proly try following the rules marketing legend Seth Godin shared.

Those in school can share their presentation experiences, especially if you’ve tried doing one with the rules applied.