While this talk by David Rose is about pitching to Venture Capitalists, he also gives some great PowerPoint tips. I was very pleased to see that he agrees with many of my thoughts on PowerPoint. In particular, David presents his top five presentation tips:
Always use Presenter Mode
Always use a remote control
Handout are NOT your presentation
Don’t read your speech
Never, ever look at the screen
All of these tips are in my free e-book. The presentation is only about 15 minutes long, but well worth watching. I was a little bemused to see that he even uses one of same slides that I use – the one of Bill Gates presenting Windows Live in 2005. David does speak at about a million words per second, so you do need to listen carefully!
If you are going to pitch your idea to anybody, he provides a great speech outline. Here is a summarized outline, but watch the presentation for his insights.
When I present my PowerPoint training, I am often asked where people can find additional tips and help for creating their PowerPoint presentations. Here is a website to add to your resource list.
Dave Paradi has created a great list of PowerPoint resources, including videos, FAQ’s, technical help experts and support.
One of my mentors, David Brooks, speaks about economy of words, and using just the right words to get your message across. His message came home to me when I won the recent humour-hopabout contest. At one stage, I was speaking about Murphy’s law’s of cell phones. and in an early draft I said something like this:
Murphy’s first law of cell phones states that the probability of your phone battery being flat is directly proportional to the urgency of the call that you need to make.
While the point that I was making was funny, I was being convoluted in the way that I was saying it. As soon as the audience heard words like “probability”, and “directly proportional”, they were going to be reminded of high-school math class, and fall asleep. In the final version, I said something like this:
Murphy’s first law of cell phones says that your battery is full if when you don’t need to make a call, but it is flat when you need to make an urgent call.
Short, simple and to the point. The audience can relate it it immediately, and have no trouble following it. It was a minor change to the message, getting exactly the same point across, but in a far more effective manner.
When you speak, consider what yout message it, how you are portraying it, and how effective you are getting it across.
