These suggestions are taken from the blog posting "Death by PowerPoint",written by Jesper Johansson.
I'm at yet another event, and this time I decided to go see a few of the other sessions instead of just trying to find as much free food as possible between my own presentations. This experience brought to mind an old concept: "Death by PowerPoint". It is almost embarrassing how some people use PowerPoint. Steve Riley frequently refers to email as "the place where knowledge goes to die". Well Steve, you have it wrong. Nothing kills knowledge as fast as putting it in PowerPoint. Here are some of the most egregious ways of using PowerPoint that I've seen.
1. PowerPoint is NOT a word processor!
The point of a PowerPoint slide is not to cram as much information into a single slide as possible. The idea of a slide is to have memory joggers that trigger thinking in the audience. That means you do not need to even have complete sentences (although it is a bonus if the words are spelled correctly). Simple statements work just fine.
2. Most of your audience probably knows how to read
A corollary to the thinking that PowerPoint is a word processor is that far too many presenters stand on stage reading the slides. It turns out that most of the audience members probably are literate and can read the slides for themselves. The purpose of a presentation is not to do so for them. If you want to read to people, go to the reading hour at the local library. A presentation is about explaining things to people that go above and beyond what they get in the slides. If it weren't, they might just as well get your slides and read them in the comfort of their own office, home, boat, or bathroom.
3. A picture is worth a thousand words, possibly more
Just because PowerPoint has bullets is no reason to use them. There is no way you can convey as much information in a slide full of bullets as you can in a slide with a single picture on it. Try this next time: Put a picture in instead of the bullets and then talk about the picture. People will find it much more interesting and much more informative. As a bonus, it makes it more worthwhile to come to the presentation as opposed to just downloading the slides, making you a more important person to have at the event.
4. It's a good idea to know your presentation
Statements like "Oops, what is that slide doing here?" or "I don't really know what this point is trying to say" are never a good thing in a presentation. Generally speaking, an audience that went through the time and effort to attend your presentation expects you to have spent at least that much time preparing for it. Taking someone else's presentation and just standing up and reading the slides as they show up is typically not going to work out too well.
For points 5-10, click here.
