I just finished conducting a 2-day presentation on environmental regulations in California. As I have done in the past few years, none of my PowerPoint presentation contained any bullet points. Here are a couple of comments about the presentation format from the audience:

“Great review of environmental regulations and law; enjoy the format; presentation was great because it wasn’t filled with bullet points; like that it was simplified.”

“Usually when a presenter uses PowerPoint, they tend to use it as their presentation. Mr. Wei used it to supplement his presentation as an aid. It tends to keep the audience more engaged and interested in the presentation.”

These comments were from two Special Agents with the federal government.

This is a wonderful video of a financial writer (Bethany McLean) talking about hedge funds. Notice how the video has a sentence on a slide and then the speaker talks about that topic following the slide. This is almost like a presentation without bullet points – a subject on the screen followed by a cvonversation. Note also how she spoke without reading any notes.

The famous producer of 60-Minutes Don Hewitt passed away yesterday. The reason his show was so successful was because he knew what every children knew and wanted: Tell me a story!

He delivered. He told stories. Thank you!

Presentations are just that – telling a story. And we certainly do not tell stories by using bullet points!

Here is a slide on a fairly esoteric topic – risk identification. The author posted it on slideshare for all to see. That’s fine.

The problem is that the slide contains talking points presented as bulletpoints. Without the author standing next to the slide to ELABORATE on his talking points, the reader is left with trying to decipher what is behind those cryptic talking points.  

A much better way for the author to communicate his ideas is to hand out his report – with complete sentences and paragraphs – in PDF format so that the reader can understand it.

I wrote about this problem awhile back. Corporate America has replaced written reports that contain complete sentences with PowerPoint slides with cryptic bullet points. The readers are forced to read between the points!

Talking points without a talker is useless.

When making a presentation, try to use as many wheelbarrow words as possible. What are wheelbarrow words? These are words that you can put inside a wheelbarrow. Here is an example:

Instead of saying that your construction firm is the “largest” in the neighborhood, you tell the audience you have 5 bulldozers and 3 cranes. People have different perception of what the word “largest” means based on their own experience. But everyone can visualize the bulldozers and construction cranes. They can all fit in a wheelbarrow – albeit a pretty big one. when they can “see” your words, they understand you.

Wheelbarrow words help minimize misunderstanding.

One of the worst features about Microsoft’s PowerPoint software is that it has far too many bells and whistles. It offers far too many “things” for the presenter. You can have those awful  bullet points fly in from the top, fly in from the bottom, fade in and fade out, fly in from the left or fly in from the right. You have an endless supply of cheesy clip arts to choose from. You can have your huge corporate logo and your name on every slide. I have seen slides where these junk takes up a third of the real estate.

Try to keep your presentation slides simple. One idea and one picture. The rest are just distractions.

I recently purchased a 12-cup coffee maker from a big box store. It costs $10! And it has only ONE button. That’s the on/off switch. The coffee tastes the same as that from a programmable high tech coffee making machine that costs 10 times as much.  

Simplicity is the key.

Kodak has just announced that it will retire its Kodachrome color slide film after 74 years. It was done in by the digital media AND PowerPoint. We will miss those beautiful color slides of our family.

But we will not miss those 14 bullet points jammed into one single Kodachrome slide.

In the bad old days when we had to pay some company $3 or $4 for every single slide we need for our presentation, we naturally put as much information as possible on a single slide. It made economic sense then.

But now – thanks to PowerPoint – we can have as many slides as we want and they are all FREE!!! So there is NO need to jam 14 bullet points in a single slide and put the audience in a deep coma.

Remember – one point per slide and lots of pictures.

Have you ever been to a conference where different speakers give presentations on a single theme? The presentations all relate to the same theme and yet they appear to be totally disjointed and unrelated. Each speaker gives his presentation as if he is the ONLY one talking about the theme at the conference. 

There is no connectivity at all among the various speakers even though they are supposed to be talking about the same general topic.

When I started out in my environmental seminar business, I used to sign up as a guest speaker with a company that conducted 2-day seminars on environmental regulations. This company would invite 6 or 7 speakers (consultants and attorneys) to its seminar and have them speak on areas of their expertise. One person would speak for an hour on the Clean Water Act, another on the Clean Air Act and another one on hazardous waste management, etc.  

Those invited speakers would talk as if the other speakers never existed even though all of these environmental laws are related. They would show up 15 minutes before their own presentation and leave right after it. They had no idea what came before and after them. The end result was a series of totally disjointed and unconnected presentations that was confusing to the audience.

If you want your presentation to stand out or be momorable to the audience, you need to come in early and sit through the presentations of previous speakers so that you can make reference to their talk when it is time to do yours.

You will be amazed how well the audience will receive you.

Many people use a lot of technical jargon and acronyms in their presentations because it gives them a sense of superiority over the common folks. This is particularly true with scientists and engineers. They like to speak “a language of their own”. That’s fine if everyone in the audience has the same training and understanding of the topic being presentation. But that is never the case.

You should use acronyms sparingly and only if the terms they represent are going to appear throughout the entire presentation. But many presenters use acronyms only once in their presentation. They end up offering an alphabet soup to the audience that is hard to digest with the inevitable result.

I was at an environmental conference in Phoenix that was hosted by the semiconductor manufacturing industries. Lots of talk about greenhouse gas and environmental sustainability. Many scientists and engineers gave talks and all of them were in PowerPoint format. with one exception, all of the PowerPoint presentations had too small fonts, too many bullet points and too many abbreviations.

The attached slide on the right has 11 abbreviations (ASTM, ANSI, SEMI, S23, GRI, SDO and so on), 6 bullet points, 13 sub bullet points and 2 sub-sub bullet points. All cramped into one SINGLE slide! The presenter is an attorney.

The font size in another presentation was so small that the bullet points were not readable from the back of a relatively small room. 

For a copy of my presentation (without any bullet points) on environmental sustainability, click here.