Slide software helped speakers and their audiences get away from the lumbering and cumbersome overhead projector. Because the software was so easy, and had so many fun elements, it took over. In my conversations with business speakers of all kinds, about 85% casually interchange the name 'Power Point (deck)' with the words 'speech' or 'presentation.'
There's nothing cool or new about Power Point anymore. Any new bells and whistles are just updated versions of old tricks. Your audiences have seen far more sophisticated media on their hand-held devices. You will not make points by relying on Power Point.
Slide software is not going away, so we need to commit to using it better than ever. Use it to add to your speech or presentation, not to be the speech or presentation.
Here's how:
1) Only when you have organized your hard copies into the best order (which you have talked through several times), do you go to Power Point.
This means that you plan your speech using writing instruments and surfaces. Gather everything together on hard copies that you can spread out and move around.
2) You enter many blank slides into the deck. Then insert into some of the slides your digital images, music clips, videos and your key points (one key point to a slide and nothing else). In between the slides you've filled with digital content, you have blank slides, that you will eventually fill with black.
What you now have is a slide deck that serves as an aid for your speaking at specific moments that make sense. When you're talking about how happy and animated people in your company are when they work on projects together, you can show a 30 second video taken at a project team meeting. Before and after that video clip will be blank slides.
3) Do not copy your quotations into slides, or use photos of props, or a list of directions for an exercise. Anything you can hold in your hands or simply speak about will make more of an impression when not also being shown in a slide.
Practices of the speech or presentation will help you determine the best moments for slides with content and the other times when blank slides will be best.
We'll talk about practice in the next post. Be sure to return.
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