Look at this innovative presentation. Looks fresh? Right? I love it. The Future of Advertising 2020 from John V Willshire Notice the slide design. Every slide is handwritten. All you need to do is to write on pieces of card paper (thicker paper) and take a picture of it. The pictures can be easily adjusted for contrast, colour & brightness in MS PowerPoint 2010 to give them a similar and consistent look. Worth trying out. Will make the presentation fresh and will make you stand out.

"What do you do differently when you are presenting a lot of data?"  I was asked this question by a reader sometime back. Here is my answer. I made a one hour long presentation just two days back. This presentation was all about numbers. Slides after slides of numbers. Market size and market growth rates. Market shares of our brand and competition. Retail penetration (reach) of brands and so on. Out of 57 slides I presented, 40-45 had some data (mostly tables). I did take feedback about the presentation from the audience later that day. My worry was presenting too much data might have gone against me. The response however was good. "It was easy for me to get what you said" said one colleague. "You moved at a slow pace and I understood everything" said another. Six things you can to do when you present too much data: 1. Present data gradually (one after the other). Feed your audience slowly. Do not go with a machine gun and shoot everyone with data...

Here are some useful posts from January 2009 to 2012. Click on the headers if you wish to read the original post. Take care of your fonts when sharing a presentation You have used 'special' fonts in your presentation. Fonts which you have downloaded from internet. You now email this presentation or give it using a USB drive. Will the presentation work exactly as it does on your system? No. If the person receiving the PPT does not have the special fonts, the software will replace it with some other font. Entire alignment and font size will go for a toss. A complete disaster! What should you do then? 1. Use only standard fonts which are there on every computer (Arial, Helvetica, etc), or 2. Embed the fonts into your presentation. In MS PowerPoint 2010, go to File -> Options -> Embed fonts in this file. In  PowerPoint 2007,  go to Powerpoint Options. Under the 'Save' Tab, check 'Embed TrueType fonts'. Keep the lights on while presenting Ma...

Pareto Principle is a famous management principle which states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In business it is observed that 80% of sales come from 20% of customers. 80% of work is done by 20% people. This is also referred to as the 80-20 principle . In my career as a sales manager and marketing manager I too have seen this principle working. Do you think this principle applies to your presentation as well?  Do 20% of your slides provide 80% of the results? Go back to the last few PPTs you have made. How many slides were there? If your PPT had 25 slides, identify the most important 5 slides (20%). Do you think these slides contained 80% of the message and (more importantly) they created 80% of the impact. Think about it. If you think its true (which it is) then can you do the following: 1. Focus on these 20% slides and prepare them well. 2. While rehearsing your presentation, give special emphasis and more time to these slides. In every present...

I am a regular reader of Trak.in . In today's post the author Arun talks about sitting through a day long conference of 10 presentations out of which 9 were boring. He says this is true of ALL presentations he has seen in his life. 90% presenters bore their audience. Why? He attributes it to the use of bullet points. Most presenters bore the audience.  Most presenters have slides full of bullet points. If you continue to to be like most people and continue to use bullets you will also bore your audience. Simple! Stand apart. Be different. Say not to bullets.

Few days back I came across an article in The Hindu newspaper. It talks about something very important. It is very relevant to teachers and trainers. The practice of taking notes in classroom is coming down. Teachers come with their PowerPoint slides and later share it with their students. Then why should students take notes? This is why students have stopped taking notes. Sometimes teachers also encourage students not to take notes, since they will be sharing slides after the class. I can empathize with this. At times, even I have been guilty of this. Guilty because we should never stop people from taking notes. The slides are your side of the story. The teachers side of the story. The notes are my side of the story. The audiences' side. The two sides are not one and the same. This is why, taking notes needs to be encouraged. Do not discourage students from taking notes when you are presenting. The author says, "When the set of slides becomes the only reference ma...

All About Presentations is now 4 years old. I started this blog on January 14, 2009. Every year Indians celebrate an important festival on Jan 14. It is called  Makar Sankranti (also called Sankranti / Pongal down South). I started the blog on this festive day and every year as I celebrate Pongal, I also celebrate the birthday of my blog. Thanks to you for reading my blog and contributing to its growth. It means a lot.

You will not read the slides while presenting because your audience is literate. What you can read, we can read too. You are not here to read your slides. If you had to read your slides, why did you come all the way. You should have emailed your slides. You will not sit at your desk and present. Get up and move. How are you going to connect with me if you sit all the while on your seat behind your laptop? Show some energy and passion. Get up you lazy fellow. You will not look at the slides while presenting. Look at me for God sake. You have come to present to yourself or to me? I am not going to like you, if you do not even look at me. You will not make slides which look like text books (full of text and full of bullet points). I am sick of it. Don't kill me. Show me something fresh. Show me something worth looking at. And stop making your slides your crutch. This is so important, it is worth repeating. We need to be reminded of the basics always. I got reminded of this...