Continue to develop the do’s & dont’s of presentations, use some more sophisticated presentation functions & tools.
No matter which presentation software you use, the same do’s and don’ts of communication usually apply.
Very often, once people get comfortable with the basics of the software they use, they explore more and more functions. While this exploration can be very fruitful, some explorers lose sight of communication best practices as they discover new presentation possibilities. The way around this mistake is to use everything you can in a presentation you’ll keep for yourself; throw everything at it but the kitchen sink! That presentation will be hidden somewhere on your hard drive or cloud for your own viewing pleasure. The presentation you prepare for an audience should follow the principles of design.
How do you know when your presentation skills are at the intermediate level? From a software use perspective, the level of comfort at using the various tools and options could perhaps be illustrated as follows:
Comfort level (in %) in using various tools and options of a specific presentation software
This is not a scientific explanation nor is it a statistical analysis of comfort levels… It is meant to give you an idea of how efficient your use of technology should be to consider yourself at the advanced or expert levels of presentation software.
But remember… You are the presenter; not the software! A skilfully made deck of slides still needs an adept communicator to get the message accross:
- Impressive form cannot save poor content,
- but amazing content can forgive lackluster form,
- while terrible form can ruin solid content.
Form includes two things: your slides and your voice. Here are few resources you can peruse to improve your understanding of what makes both.
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| The Principle Elements of Design – by the Official SlideShare Blog |
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| Julian Treasure: How to speak so that people want to listen – TED Talks |
| Presentation Zen – Garr Reynold’s blog |
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| The Long Last Art of Explanation – Lee LeFever |