PowerPoint can be a very effective tool to convey an idea or concept but without a worthwhile concept to convey slides are nothing more than forgettable placeholders. Even a professionally designed layout, created by a visual artist, (which is something I recommend) falls flat if it doesn’t make a point.

So if the message is so important why don’t we spend more time crafting it?

This blog site is devoted to giving people skills to enhance their presentations. As a professional speaker myself, I constantly seek out tools that will help me better convey my message. Most of the advice I have seen lately trains people on how to make their slides better (fewer words, less pictures). The key is to know where you are going to end up.

The end of a presentation comes after your audience has left and gone back to their lives. If you have created an effective presentation your audience will think or do things differently as a result of your presentation. Focusing too much on the creation of your slides (medium over message) shifts your focus from what the audience will gain to how you will look.

In defense of PowerPoint however, the software is very easy to use and provides us with a very easy method of displaying visual information. If your message is visual, use PowerPoint. If it is better expressed through a story, an exercise, a written document, or an experience (like a test drive of a new car), use something else.

You have a multitude of options. Keep your focus on what the audience will leave with and act accordingly. To PowerPoint or not to PowerPoint. That is the question.

Another success that has crept into our lexicon is the replacement of the word “presentation” with the term PowerPoint. Late in the 1990′s it became commonplace for us to use the word presentation and expect that the presenter would show up with PowerPoint slides. This substitution lowered our collective expectations of what a presentation could be an limited our communications with our audiences to a series of poorly designed slides.

What if “presentation” didn’t mean PowerPoint? Well it doesn’t and there is no reason why you need to be limited to the PowerPoint Paradigm.

When you earn the right to speak before and audience (Audiences are a Privilege That You Earn) it is important to match their expectations with the message you would like to convey. There are numerous ways to do this without ever clicking on the PowerPoint icon.

Most of us learned from teachers and instructors writing on blackboards and whiteboards. I enjoy watching short video clips of other’s ideas. A great speaker can convey more information verbally in 30 minutes than an entire deck of forgettable slides. So why do we insist on using PowerPoint?

The problem stems from our desire to shortcut the presentation process. The slides, and yes Apple Keynote users are just as guilty, are the last thing that you should create in the presentation process. The process is as follows:

Understand audience expectations
Brainstorm ideas for content
Organize content into a logical framework
Review ideas and framework for relevance to audience
Break framework into memorable chunks
Determine the best method of conveying each memorable idea (Story, activity, etc.)
Loosely script presentation
Create takeaways
Create the visual aides to support presentation

Nine steps is a lot of work and if you are pressed for time it is easy to simply skip to the end and create the visual aides (sometimes we make our visual aides serve double duty as our takeaways.) But if an audience has trusted you enough with a commitment of their precious time shouldn’t you spend the time creating a presentation worthy of your audience?
Even if the audience is your co-workers or peers you should still take the time to make sure you are not wasting theirs. This requires planning, giving yourself enough time to create a presentation, and a focus on their needs not just your need to cross another presentation off of your list.

Audiences are a privilege that you earn. Don’t shortchange them by “throwing some slides together.” Create a presentation and they will thank you.

On the left is a box that includes the slide that the audience sees on the screen. What is hidden from the audience is everything else on the screen. The text box on the right of the screen are the notes accompanying that slide, which incidentally is where your speaking notes should be in the first place. At the bottom is a strip of slide images that shows the upcoming slides. Also included are a timer and a clock.

This allows the presenter to use their laptop as a confidence monitor and have access to those notes which formerly crowded the slides.

Since the windows are scalable the presenter can resize them to meet his specific requirements. I oftentimes will maximize the size of the note box and the slide strip so I can quickly refer to my notes and remind myself of what is coming up in the presentation. The zoom feature at the bottom of the text window allows you to increase the size of the font so even my old eyes can read them at a glance.

With a little practice you can become quite proficient with this, and no one but you may ever know that you are using this magic feature.

His question to me was, “John, I have 24 hours before I have to make this presentation. What can I do to make my slides better?”

“Turn them off,” was my unexpected response. PowerPoint is a very valuable tool but oftentimes the right tool for the job is not a tool.

Now a Catholic Mass is usually about 1 hour, 45 minutes if you have a short sermon and a tailwind, so a 30-minute mass intrigued me. One reading, the Gospel and a 3-minute sermon. Yes, a 3 minute sermon directly relevant to the day’s readings.

After the mass, which only lasted 26 minutes, I asked the priest how often he celebrated Mass at the airport. “2 – 3 times a week. Always a new crowd.” I joked that he could just recycle sermons and no one would know the difference.

“Why would I do that?” he replied indignantly. “They are so easy to come by. Just listen for the message in the Gospel, think of how that message impacted your life and tell them the story. Close it up with a line about how they can use this on their travels and you are done.”

Now that is a great speech formula. Message, story, immediate relevance for the audience and all in 3 minutes or less. If only more people thought like Fr. Bede. Thanks for the sermon.

who art in Heaven (5)

hallowed be Thy Name (6)

Thy Kingdom come (4)

Thy Will be done (4)

On earth (2)

As it is in Heaven (6)

The cadence is familiar to most of us. Prayers broken into 3-6 syllable segments to make sure everyone can keep up. This sort of sing-song meter is very common throughout spoken prayer but on Sunday the sermon continued to follow the cadence. Speaking in clipped phrases the priest did his best to get to the heart of the Gospel message but sadly within minutes his sing-song tone had lulled just about everyone into a comfortable stupor. Trapped in the middle of his hypnotic delivery was his key point which fell on the deaf ears of a congregation that had struggled to keep their focus.

I even began to wonder why my mind was wandering. I work on practicing active listening and I was daydreaming about 4 minutes in. My mind kept repeating, “There is a direct correlation between the audience’s attention and the speaker’s vocal dimension.”

Vary your delivery, that’s the key. And there are so many ways to do it. Slow down or speed up. Vary the length of your phrases. Raise or lower your volume. Pause. Add emphasis to key words. Use alliteration, rhyming, free verse, iambic pentameter, dialogue, even repetition of a key phrase. Just change your delivery and change it often. Their attention is fueled by your dimension.

Have any of you seen newer studies that talk about this green premium or what additional price someone would be willing to pay for a comparable product which was “green?”