Creating Useful, No, Impactful Presentations

How many times to do you find yourself reverting to the good old PowerPoint presentation to make a point?  We utilize it extensively in my world.  So much so that I think we actually believe that people are reading our slides and that the presentations are making an impact.  When, in reality, the presentation may actually be distracting for the audience and create a barrier to learning.  Like we need any additional barriers, right? 

The fact is, there are a number of different tactics we can take in the design of the presentation that allow us to create a presentation that supports the presentation instead of distracting from it.  This helps the learner to process the information in a way that might lead to a memory which is the foundation for learning to take hold.  Joshua Johnson provides some sage advice for those of us stuck in the world of PowerPoint.  If we're going to use it, we'd best use it to our advantage.  Check out his tips at:

10 Tips for Designing Presentations That Don't Suck - Tips 1-5

10 Tips for Designing Presentations That Don't Suck - Tips 6-10

I've made a pledge to myself to implement a few of these tips and am planing to share it with our leadership team.  I'm even thinking of a training session designed to help our leaders begin to understand that what they are saying is the important part of their presentation, not what is on the screen.  That may or may not be a reality.  I hope to help us all understand that PowerPoint is a wonderful support for a presentation, but it is in fact, a support.  We,the speakers, are still the most important part of the message.