·:[ Sound and Fury ]:·
• • • • •

Update:Here’s another vote for ditching the slides: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/06/kill_your_prese.html

Others [edwardtufte.com] have written extensively on using something other than presentation software for a presentation. The keys for truly excellent presentations can be:

• Be passionate about your topic
• Have a specific point-of-view from which you tell the story
• Use pictures and graphics to clearly display complex relationships

Obviously, none of these have anything to do with presentation software, much less with PowerPoint. Unfortunately, many organizations require PPT files for briefings. Taskings come down, “Prepare 5 slides that explain the problem and recommended solution,” and off we go creating dumbed down versions of complex problems.

If you can’t bust out of the PPT though, what can you do? Here are some tips that may help:

• Ask for the “sale” first.
  All sales reps know that you have to ask for the sale to get it. When briefing courses of action, that means telling leadership the recommended course of action up front. Make this your first slide.
• Anticipate questions and provide the answers in advance.

Technical issues:

• Font
  Use a san-serif font (Arial or Verdana) for display and a serif font (TNR) for printing.
• Color
  Use a dark background and light text for display, and vice versa for printing. Consider highway exit signs - our eyes can more easily distinquish light text on dark when the display is large. Of coure, your newspaper is black on white.
• More than color
  Never use color alone to convey content. If you must use red/yellow/green, then use different characters as well and include a key. For example, * is high, # is medium and & is low. Remember that not everyone has a color printer and 10% of men are color-blind.