Thing 20: Presentations

I have been using PowerPoint for years and find it a brilliant tool for presentations.  Having said that, I admit that it's not the easiest software to use, particularly if you want to add music or a narrative, or if you want to make a timed presentation in which slides change automatically rather than at the press of a button.  Also, because of the many design and special effects options PowerPoint offers, it's easy to get carried away and create an all-flashing, all-swivelling presentation in which the message gets completely lost!

The most recent PowerPoint presentation I created was for a group of students who were studying to become curators of arts events and wanted to learn how to manage collections of archival nature with limited resources.  This was an awfully interesting challenge as I really had to go back to basics and think simple.  I decided to focus on three different media: paper, photographs and audio-visual recordings.  I included a brief overview of each media, followed by basic handling rules and storage ideas that did not require complex solutions such as climate control or acid-free containers.

Once I had worked out the topics and the general "plot" of the presentation, I began putting it together in PowerPoint.  My personal experience is that people are much more drawn to pictures than they are to text so I tried to come up with catchy, colourful illustrations.  The images also acted as cues for me so that I didn't need a thick wad of notes when giving the presentation.  I interspersed photographs with text but kept the text slides as light as possible, with no more than three or four bullet-pointed lines per slide.  I decided to go for a manual rather than automated slide show which turned out to be a good choice as the course participants were very engaged and asked lots of questions throughout the presentation.

I'm not an expert on using PowerPoint but I have found the following rules of thumb helpful:

• Use images rather than text slides
• If you need to use text, keep it as short and concise as possible.  Nobody wants to read through lines and lines of small print on the screen
• Leave the text slides on for a bit longer to allow people to copy the information if they wish to do so.  Alternatively, provide participants with paper copies of the presentation
• People get tired of looking at the same image for minutes on end so the more images the presentation contains the better - within reason of course!  Ideally, a photographic slide should not stay up for more than half a minute or so.

I was interested in learning about Prezi and Google Slides and would be very keen to experiment with both.  I agree that their templates look more streamlined and contemporary than those of PowerPoint, although if design is your thing it won't be difficult to make PowerPoint look contemporary too.

Image source: "Creative Commons Your Presentation was Confusing and Unpersuasive" by bsoist licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.