If PowerPoint caused the war, Excel caused the financial crisis

The big buzz in the presentation community yesterday was the front page article in the New York Times that referred to PowerPoint as “the enemy” and trotted out the familiar line that “PowerPoint makes us stupid”. Could this be tomorrow’s front page story?

Excel caused the financial crisis
Government officials today announced today that Excel, the spreadsheet program from Microsoft, was the cause of the recent worldwide financial crisis. “If you look at Excel, it forces you into cells, separate boxes that don’t recognize the interconnectedness of the factors”, said one official. The report outlined how financial professionals used Excel to make complex spreadsheets that analyzed various transactions and financial instruments. The authors concluded that the software forces you to create complex formulas that few understand or can explain. They dismissed the argument that Excel is just a tool and people who use it poorly or don’t understand complex formulas were really at fault. “The software should know better. The user is never at fault”, the study states. Academics have now called for a ban on Excel, urging the use of an abacus instead.

It is interesting that when we use the familiar logic of blaming the software for anything other than PowerPoint, the critics cry out that, oh no, it doesn’t apply to word processing or spreadsheets. Interesting logic. It is easy to trot out the familiar “Death by PowerPoint” argument, and that is what the media usually does. I guess criticism sells newspapers better than positive stories.

So I want to take the more challenging route and talk about some positive lessons presenters can learn from the visual that the article used as an illustration of a poor slide.

First, it is at least a visual and not an endless series of bullet points. Many presentations would be more effective if the presenter used diagrams, graphs, photos or other visuals to illustrate their ideas instead of endless slides full of bullet points.

Second, it is likely an overview slide that is shown to give context of what the presenter will talk about next. By giving an audience context first, we enable them to put the rest of what we say into a framework that makes it easier to understand. Anything we can do to communicate our message more effectively is a good thing.

Third, the diagram uses colors to organize the different groups of information: black for Coalition, Light Blue for government, Dark Blue for ANSF, and so on. Using colors or shapes to group like items or ideas aids the audience in understanding the information better. Presenters could apply this idea to many lists or visuals to better organize the information for the audience.

Fourth, the diagram uses different font sizes to indicate the major items and the minor items under each grouping. Varying text size is another technique used to indicate importance to an audience. When you are making a distinction between items in a hierarchy, text size is a useful indicator.

Finally, the diagram uses a sans-serif font. Research shows that sans-serif fonts are easier to read than serif fonts when projected, so at least the presenter is using a font that is going to be easier to see.

Does the visual have aspects that could be improved? Of course it does. I don’t think you would ever be able to find a slide that everyone would agree could not be improved in some way. Let’s stop looking for the worst in everything we see and look for the positive lessons that we can use in our presentations.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #50: Adding a visual to a quote

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Quotations are commonly used to illustrate a point in a presentation. Instead of just using the text of the quote, use the ideas in this makeover to add a visual that makes the quote come alive for the audience.

This slide was submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

How advice to those pitching VC’s applies to all presenters

Rebecca Lynn wrote a very good article on what should be in a presentation to venture capital firms (VC’s) on CNET here. Now I know most of us don’t present to venture capitalists, but there are some lessons here for all presenters.

First, start with the conclusion. Research published in John Medina’s book “Brain Rules” reinforces Rebecca’s suggestion to start with “your best stuff.” Don’t wade through a lot of data or details before getting to the conclusion.

Second, everything else in your presentation needs to support the conclusion you started with. Notice how each slide Rebecca suggests goes back to supporting the first slide. Audiences want to see how the details support your initial statement.

Third, be prepared to go in a non-linear order. Rebecca suggests that if the presentation goes well, you probably won’t make it past slide 2 before they want to go off in another direction. If appropriate, let the audience drive the sequence of the presentation by designing it as a non-linear presentation or at minimum know how to jump to any slide in your presentation.

Good ideas to keep in mind for any presentation, not just those to VC’s.

Helping Presentation Consulting Businesses

At this year’s Presentation Summit (formerly known as PowerPoint Live), I’ll be conducting a pre-conference workshop designed to help people build or grow a presentation consulting business. With all of the turmoil in the job market these days, many people have chosen to, or been forced to, set up their own business. For those with a design background, the presentation consulting business is one choice. We all know there are so many presentations that need help!

In this workshop, we’ll look at the business side of running your own presentation consulting shop. To support the information at the workshop, I’ll be conducting an anonymous survey of presentation consulting businesses in May and June. I’ll be asking questions about their business and their results so that we can get a true picture of what this industry really looks like. To my knowledge, this is the first time that this type of survey has been done and promises to provide valuable insight that can help new entrants and established businesses.

Here’s what I am planning to cover at the workshop:

Part 1: Defining your business
It would be easy to say all presentation consultants do the same thing, but that’s not reality. We’ll talk about at least six parameters that you should define in order to be clear about what your business offers to a potential client.

Part 2: The financial side
As much as you may not want to deal with the numbers, you will have to. We’ll talk about pricing models and how getting clear on your financial goals determines your daily activities.

Part 3: Getting clients
We all know that so many presenters need our services, but just opening your business does not guarantee a flood of paying customers. We’ll talk about numerous options for marketing your business, selling your services and managing this area.

Part 4: Running the business
Providing service to your clients is probably the part you enjoy the most. But there are many behind the scenes roles that you must take care of. We’ll talk about these so that you can thoughtfully manage your time each day.

I won’t be advocating one business model or way of running your company. There is no one correct way to do this business. We’ll explore options so that you can consider what makes sense for your unique situation. There will be lists, spreadsheets and other resources to download after the workshop to help you apply the ideas to your own business. And of course I and most of the other participants will be around the entire conference to continue the discussions.

If you are interested in attending, make sure you sign up at www.PresentationSummit.com. See you there!

PowerPoint Tip: So what’s all the fuss about the backchannel?

A lot has been written recently about incorporating the backchannel into presentations. If you aren’t familiar with the term “backchannel”, it refers to comments people in the audience are sharing with the world via Twitter and other social media sharing sites. In my opinion, all this talk has little relevance for most presenters. Here’s why.

First, in order to consolidate the comments about a presentation, Twitter users attach a hashtag to their tweet. Usually it is a tag associated with the event as opposed to each specific presentation. For example, all of the comments at last year’s PowerPoint Live conference were tagged with the #pptlive hashtag. This is now common with many large conferences. But that’s the thing. Only conferences assign a hashtag. There is no way every project update presentation, sales pitch, or training program in an organization is going to have its own hashtag. So for most presentations, the mechanism for consolidating comments doesn’t exist. And I don’t see most regular presenters creating a hashtag for every presentation they do.

Second, if you don’t have a large audience like a conference does, it becomes pretty hard to be tweeting while the presentation is going on. In a room of six people gathered for a presentation, if three of them were constantly tweeting on their phone or laptop, the whole meeting would fall apart. They are gathered there to exchange information and make decisions, not tweet. There is no place in most corporate presentations for tweeting.

Third, in most presentations, if you have a question or concern, you put up your hand and ask. If you agree with something the presenter said, you nod your head. You don’t whip out your phone to tweet about it. Most presentations work on interaction between the presenter and the participants, and between the different participants as they discuss the topic at hand. If you have genuine interaction, there is no need for a backchannel.

And I guess that’s the big problem I have in thinking that the backchannel applies to that many presentations. It assumes that the front channel, what you say in front of each other, doesn’t work. In a conference setting with hundreds or thousands of people in the room, the front channel is a challenge. But in my opinion, the number of presentations done in corporate meeting rooms, a training room, or in someone’s office is far, far larger than the number of conference presentations. Sure, conference presentations get more glory perhaps. But the majority of the real work of presentations gets done in smaller settings amongst people who are there to get work done and make decisions. In those settings, you can interact with your audience and engage them with conversation, so there is no need for a backchannel to exist.

The bottom line for most corporate presenters: Don’t worry about the backchannel, it won’t impact the presentations you do every day.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #49: Showing differences in magnitude

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. To many presenters, numbers are the natural way to show differences in magnitude; and the more numbers the better. Our audiences get overwhelmed by all the numbers and miss the point unless we use the lessons in this makeover to turn the numbers into a visual that shows the difference clearly.

This slide was submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

Does reading your slides work on video?

A fellow entrepreneur just forwarded me a link to one of the “Internet Marketing gurus” latest venture. He’s telling people that video sales letters work much better than written sales copy. Now I’m not here to debate whether that is true or not. What caught my attention is that he suggests that you create video sales letters by creating text PowerPoint slides and reading them. He claims that in his tests, this type of sales letter works better than ones that include visuals.

So I spent the time to watch his entire sales video. And I found myself struggling with the same problem that happens when a presenter stands up at the front of the room and reads their slides. I can read faster than he can speak, so I am done before he is finished reading. And when I am reading, I can’t listen to what he is saying, so I tune him out and miss what he has said. I guess he missed the research that shows that people use the same part of their brain for reading and listening.

My surveys on what annoys people about bad PowerPoint presentations have consistently showed that the biggest annoyance, by far, is reading your slides. After reviewing this video, I am pretty confident in saying that reading slides as a video is almost as annoying as doing it live. (And when you have spelling and grammatical errors, it doesn’t help your credibility.)

When you don’t include visuals such as graphs, diagrams, and photos, you miss out on the opportunity to connect visually with the audience. Text on a slide is not usually your most effective visual choice. There were many times during this video that I thought of visuals that could have made the point come alive for the viewer.

Video is just a different vehicle for communicating your message. If you are creating a video of your slides, the same principles apply: clear structure, clean design, persuasive visuals, and effective delivery. Keep those in mind and you will communicate your message effectively.

PowerPoint Tip: "You know, it’s just like…"

One of the reasons that presenters don’t use visuals instead of text is because they don’t know what visual to use to explain the point they are making. Business professionals tell me all the time that they aren’t graphic artists or designers, so how can they come up with a visual? In my book "The Visual Slide Revolution", I list 38 words or phrases and the clues they give as to what visual will work as a good replacement for all the text. Recently, I came up with an additional insight.

I was preparing a workshop for a client and I realized how powerful the following phrase can be when thinking about visuals. We often use this phrase, "You know, it's just like ..." during conversations when we are trying to explain a concept, idea, process, object, or pretty much anything that the other person is not familiar with. We use this phrase to frame the new item in a way that is easy to understand for the listener.

Let me break this phrase down into two parts to show the power it has. First, the start of the phrase "You know." By starting with these words, we put the listener on notice that we are about to explain something in a way that is familiar to them. Immediately they are put at ease knowing that the coming explanation will be easy to understand because it is coming from a perspective of familiarity. The second part of the phase, "it’s just like", lets them know that we are going to create a word picture analogy. This allows them to organize the coming information in a familiar way since it is similar to something they already know.

Here’s how this phrase can help you create visuals in your presentations. Whenever you are stuck wondering what visual would be better than paragraphs of text, place yourself in the position of explaining the idea to someone who has no background with what you are talking about. Start by saying, "You know, it’s just like …" and finish that sentence. Capture the word picture you just painted either by writing it out or recording yourself on your computer or cell phone. Turn that word picture into an actual visual on your slide.

I never suggest that we can eliminate all text from our presentations, that’s not the objective. Research shows that visuals are more powerful than text alone, so use the phrase, "You know, it’s just like …" to develop visuals for your slides that will make your presentation more effective.

How the ban on texting while driving applies to presentations

In many jurisdictions they have now banned drivers from texting or reading e-mail while driving. The safety experts and statistics show that when a driver is distracted by reading, they are more likely to miss what is happening on the road and end up in an accident. Even Oprah has started a campaign to get people to pledge not to text and drive.

How does this apply to our presentations? If we put up slides full of text on the screen, we are distracting the audience just like drivers are distracted. Research has shown that our brains don’t do well trying to read and listen at the same time. The audience’s focus is over on the screen reading the text and they miss the important message we are delivering. When their attention turns back to us, they may find themselves confused as to what we are talking about because they missed what we were saying while they were reading.

Am I suggesting we should never have text on slides? No. We still have text on road signs, but they observe the rules regarding road signs. Those rules are designed so that a driver can glance at the sign, absorb the relevant information in under two seconds, and return their focus to the road. We should use the same principle when designing not just the text, but all aspects of our slides.

Here are some tips. First, build each element on your slides so that the audience can quickly understand what is new on the slide and return to hear you explain what it means to them. Second, after adding something new to a slide, pause about a second and a half before you start speaking. This gives the audience time to absorb the new part of the visual and return their focus to you. And third, design your visuals so that they are easy to interpret for your audience. This may mean different visuals for different audiences, even though the topic is the same, since their background and perspective may be different.

If you’d like to create more persuasive visuals, check out my book The Visual Slide Revolution for my five-step KWICK method.