Presentations
Do your have to make a critical pitch before potential clients or to the Board of Directors?
Do you think, “PowerPoint will save me!” when you have to present a topic to a group? After all, you can do so many things with a PowerPoint® presentation to spice it up; to make it “sexy.” However, you may have trouble because:
- You’re not comfortable speaking before the public or
- You’ve pitched the subject so often to so many different audiences that you can do it in your sleep
What PowerPoint Can Do for You
PowerPoint is software tool. An experienced speaker uses PowerPoint to great effect by effectively communicating the content and enhancing the experience of their audience.
PowerPoint will not make you a good public speaker.
For that matter, I cannot make you a good public speaker, either. You can do that, through practice.
PowerPoint is Not the Presentation
If we don’t understand the original quote, we might disagree with this thesis by pointing to the oft-quoted statement made by Marshall McLuhan:
“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan, McGraw-Hill (1964)
This is reinforced today, for instance, by colleagues who refer to their presentations as: “This morning, I gave a PowerPoint!”
That’s a problem, because the subject matter you present, not the tool, is the presentation.
Kill Your Audience? Not!
PowerPoint often seduces subject matter presenters so that they kill their audience through the overuse of its bells and whistles.
I create PowerPoint documents that:
Support your subject matter
Help you hold your audience’s attention
Sell your selling point