{"id":1853,"date":"2013-01-02T16:33:45","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T21:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/?p=1853"},"modified":"2018-01-03T17:22:21","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T21:22:21","slug":"how-to-create-effective-presentations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/how-to-create-effective-presentations\/","title":{"rendered":"How to create effective presentations"},"content":{"rendered":"
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my name is Bill Gates and I have something important to tell you<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Aaaand off to a bad start Most people that lead a professional life need to do presentations on a regular basis. Which is why it never seizes to amaze me that, consistently, almost all of the presentations that I see, suck.<\/p>\n

Leaving halfway through the presentation really doesn’t solve anything. I mean, this evil energy will continue to exist even if I try to ignore it. Truth is I haven’t learned the right way to make suggestions to a presenter without having her break into tears. So, the only thing I can think of in this crusade against unproductivity<\/em> is to write a post about it. I have no intention whatsoever to point out how to do a proper Power Point presentation. My goal is \u00e2\u20ac\u201cas everything else here\u00e2\u20ac\u201c to vent a little.<\/p>\n

Surely, I’m not alone. Dozens of advocates of\u00a0productivity porn<\/a>\u00a0have\u00a0written<\/a>\u00a0about this in\u00a0ways<\/a>\u00a0that i’ll never be\u00a0able to<\/a>.\u00a0So let’s say that this is, at best, a summary of what I’ve read:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The only thing worse than having to endure a poorly-done presentation is making one without knowing it.<\/b>\u00a0So,<\/p>\n

7 Signs that your presentation sucks:<\/h2>\n

1. You’re using font size 16 or less.
\n<\/b>Is it so that no one can read your typos?<\/p>\n

2. You’re basically showing bullet points without making up a narrative.<\/b>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Just like this one
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 and this other one that doesn’t add anything<\/p>\n

3. Each sentence occupies more than one line.
\n<\/b>What’s that on the screen? A novel?<\/p>\n

4. You are reading the slides.
\n<\/b>Both Powerpoint and Keynote have a feature called Presenter Display. It has a timer, the current slide and the next one. It’s one of those amazing discoveries of the human race. And it’s there precisely so that the audience doesn’t notice that you haven’t memorized your slides.<\/p>\n

5. All the slides have animation.
\n<\/b>As if you’d just recently discovered that computers can do that.<\/p>\n

6. No contrast.<\/b>
\nYes, we all know that you like a black font over a blue background. Yes, we also know that in that your company the shading color should always be red. But, how about if you do some slides that can actually be read?<\/p>\n

7. Over 15 slides in over 30 minutes.<\/b>
\nUnless you are really funny or really talented (which you’re NOT), nobody can endure a 30 minute lecture without starting to think about stuff that really matters in life.<\/p>\n

After twenty minutes, the person with the highest rank will leave to take a phone call.<\/p>\n

After thirty, the people that don’t really have to be there will fall asleep.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, how do we fix this?<\/p>\n

Follow the 10\/20\/30 rule<\/h2>\n

Guy Kawasaki, a mythical figure in the tech world (and more importantly in tech marketing), created a few years back one of the creeds that I still follow: the 10\/20\/30 rule<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The premise is simple and easy to remember: a PowerPoint presentation should have no more than 10 slides, last no more than 20 minutes and contain a font size of 30 or higher<\/strong>.<\/p>\n