It's all about the signal to noise ratio. Too much information might confuse or distract your audience. The presentation is "YOU" not the slides. This is why you should use visuals far more then text on your slides. It's easier to remember an image then text. It's just how our minds work. Too much text will lead to the audience or even worse, you to read from your slides, which looks really silly. People can read faster then you can speak.
The following post on betterppt is a good example of someone who dared to try it (you can see some slides above).
The other day I was working with a client on a presentation that had to be less than 10 minutes, and he was frustrated with the challenge of creating slide content for a talk so brief.
I said one thing to him that became a bit of a sea change.
“Why don’t you forget entirely about slides with text on them?”
[silence]
“I’ll bet you could be just as persuasive with your words, and your slides could be even more impactful.”
It needs to be said that I caught my client at a weak moment in which he was unusually receptive to such an unconventional idea. Most execs would look at me as if I were from Mars were I to suggest slides with no text on them, but the rigors of a 10-minute presentation demanded unusual measures.
His talk went beautifully. Which raises the more vital question: Could you do it? Do you know your topic well enough? And are you sufficiently in touch with the images that you would want to evoke with your audience?
It's always easy to criticize others or just say or how to do it. That's why I'm glad I tried this myself during my desktop security presentation for which I received great feedback. My inspiration was Garr Renolds from PresentationZen.com. Here is an excellent video where he talks about some major points from his book. If you like what you see (or hear), buy his book. It's really worth it.
Another style of short graphical presentations is Pecha Kucha and in a few weeks, there will be the 4th edition in Brussels. More details in my following post. Come and see. It might inspire you.
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2 comments:
I've been using mind maps for presentations. They are like bullet points on steroids: jsut a few words but lines and graphics to emphasize the context and relationships. The simplest way is to work sequentially around the arms of a circular mind map, slide-by-slide.
:-) G.
Thank you for the comment. Might be interesting to experiment with.
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