Presenting Your Ideas
Presenting to an audience is something of an art form. At some point in our professional lives, we’re bound to have to present something to at least a small group of our colleagues. A couple of Internet searches will turn up a number of good resources on how to prepare and how to talk (for example, here and here). In my experience though, almost everyone talks about using Microsoft Powerpoint. That’s not always a good thing.
A number of years ago, I worked at a semiconductor company, which had regular engineering “update” meetings. Back then, we used to use an OHP and slides to present, as computer projectors were still rare and expensive. We used to have a bit of a saying, which was something like “the more colourful the slide, the less they have to say”. In short, the engineers who were busy just knocked up some rough slides, printed them quickly in black and white and presented off them. The people who had nothing much to report spent their time getting the colour printers to work (probably because they weren’t busy doing actual work!?), and hoped a bit of glitz would make up for their lack of content.
The point here is that regardless of the visual presentation, the content is by far the most important thing. That said though, what you do visually can really help get your point across, so it’s worth thinking about it, particularly if your presentation is a “one chance” sort of thing, and it matters to you that you’re successful.
I personally think Powerpoint (and OpenOffice Impress, Apple Keynote, and most others) offer the skilled presenter the tools to do a reasonable job. They also offer the inexperienced presenter far, far more features than they should use. There’s an expression that says “perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away“. As a general rule, steer clear of slide transitions, sounds, and even clipart, unless it’s actually adding something to the message you’re trying to get across. If you do use any of these things, make sure they work in the place you’ll present. Lots of visual effects don’t work very well on projectors, web meetings, etc.
There’s something else: Sometimes slides actually constrain your thinking. If you’re planning out a presentation, it’s often best not to load up your presentation application (Powerpoint, et al) – instead, just think about what you’re going to be talking about. Let that decide how you’re going to present. There’s no rule that says you must use slides at all, perhaps all you need is a single, inspirational picture? Perhaps you need people to think about things in a new way, which might suggest using a different visual, perhaps a video, or something like Prezi?
Either way, whatever you do, make sure you use the right tool for the job. Make sure you’re comfortable with it, make sure you like your presentation, and make sure it’s not the way it is because you think someone else wants it that way. Sometimes this means telling your boss you’d prefer to do things a different way, which might be hard (or even impossible). Just make sure your medium doesn’t get in the way of your message.