Digital Streets

Today I had the misfortune of sitting through a 90 minute presentation. I say misfortune, not because the material was dry and boring, but because the presenter had not learned how to avoid the biggest PowerPoint pitfall - his part of the presentation boiled down to reading off of the PowerPoint slides. He offered no discussion on these slides, no greater detail, only the words on the screen. Word by painful word. You could feel the clock grinding to a stop, as seconds seemed like hours. The 5o pages of the presentation had been sent out last week for review so that people could have a chance to see if there were any areas that they saw as problematic. If we reviewed the 50 pages and all he was going to do was read the 50 pages, then why bother with the presentation?

A PowerPoint presentation should never be used as the speaker’s script. The speaker should discuss the points on the presentation. Go into greater detail, paint a larger picture of the statements and info on the slides. You never want to make your audience spend more time looking at their watches than paying attention to your message. Being a PowerPoint parrot is the quickest way to completely ruin even the greatest of presentations.