Electronic Chloroform

I was reading a book on presentation and the author mentioned that PowerPoint is essentially electronic chloroform. It KNOCKS you out!!

People use bullet points as reminders of their content. And yet they show them to the audience in batches of 10 or more bullet points. As they read the first bullet point out loud, the audience is already reading point #7 and has completely lost interest in what the speaker is talking about.

So next time you use or see those dreadful bullet points in a presentation, think “electronic chloroform” and try  not to pass out.

 

Telling jokes and public speaking

Here is an excellent video of Andrew Stanton (famous playwright and director) giving a talk in TED.

I think speakers and comedians are both story tellers. The two groups BOTH convey messages through their stories (some stores are real while others are not). Comedians often use stories that are not real while speakers tell real stories. The message in Stanton’s story (joke) is that one simple mistake can brand you for life. His punch line was very funny and the audience got it in a nano second.

Less than half-way through the video, I noticed that he kept glancing down. The frequency picked up as he progressed. I found myself starting to count the number of times he did that – and that’s not good. I realized why he was doing that when I saw the teleprompter box on the floor in front of him.

I don’t understand why he had to refer to the prompter so often since there was plenty of time for him to refresh his memory during the video clips he was showing. He could have also written notes on the palm of his left hand ala Sarah Palin.

Hilarious video on PowerPoint melt down

One of the comments on YouTube was this: “I don’t get it. Perfectly executed presentation if you ask me, he said exactly what was shown on the screen.”

The point is that you are NOT supposed to share your talking points with your audience. What’s on the screen should NEVER be the exact words you say to the audience. If you are going to mouth the same words, why not just sit down and let the audience read them?

Presentations that Work

My book “Presentations that Work” is now available in paper form. You can purchase it here for $12.95 (free shipment). The electronic version in PDF is available for $7.95.

The paper version will soon be available in Amazon.com as well.

Join me on January 31, 2012 at 1 pm (EST) for a FREE one-hour webinar on how to make GREAT PowerPoint presentations.

Bad stage ettiquette

At the same conference that I was in, one of the keynote speakers was an executive from London. Someone must have told him it was good practice to speak amongst the audience (about 200 persons) by walking around. And it is a good practice. Much better than standing behind a lectern.

But his chap took it to the extreme. He was darting around the room like a headless chicken and getting right into the person space of the audience. He made the audience very uncomfortable by getting very close to some people’s faces.

And then he made the fatal mistake. He went over his allotted one-hour time slot by 20 minutes. That is a CARDINAL sin for speakers. A good speaker always shows discipline and RESPECTS the audience and the speakers following him by staying on time.

If I were the MC, I would have turned off his mike and ushered him out of the room. Perhaps the reason he was darting around the room so much was that he was trying to avoid the trap door on the floor that would drop him.

A very poor speaker. Very few people remembered his mumblings. But they all remembered his poor performance. Another case of you can’t fix stupid.

See how our brains respond to external stimuli ….

I came across this post in LinkedIn by Dr. Preeti Vats – a psychologist and public speaker in the New York area. In her post, she offers some insights on how our brains work and how they are stimulated by external forces – such as your presentations. Very interesting article. Here is her post in its entirety and unedited.

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The brain, as I like to describe it, is an incredibly complex series of neural networks. Specific regions and structures—many of which perform multiple functions—are interconnected to (if you will pardon the expression) a mind-boggling degree. Today, thanks to the amazing advances that have been made in neuroscience, we understand a great deal about how these networks operate, and we are able to capture and analyze the brain’s responses to stimuli at the subconscious level and what effects it most positively.

But here I will touch upon some key learnings derived from the thousands of neuromarketing studies that have been conducted around the world. These findings are ones which every speaker can apply almost immediately.

Faces are Fundamental: the brain simply loves faces. Following many millennias’ worth of neurological development and refinement, we are built to search facial expressions for indications of intent. Are you friend or foe? One of our core recommendations is: find ways to focus on faces in your power points , stories, events etc. Your audience’s brain will (subconsciously) thank you for it.

“The brain dislikes sharp edges and straight lines. To the limited extent they exist in nature itself, they represent a threat to the subconscious mind.”

Curves are Critical: the brain dislikes sharp edges and straight lines. To the limited extent they exist in nature itself, they represent a threat to the subconscious mind. Such features can cut, maim, even kill—and they automatically invoke what is known as an ‘avoidance response’ deep in the brain. We are driven away from them, without even being aware of it. So avoid such things in your visual presentations.

Images on the Left, Words on the Right: The brain is built to prefer this presentation. Apply it to everything from advertising your profile to speaking convention.

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The old horse and buggy rule

I posted on LinkedIn about how one should feel free to use as many slides as necessary in one’s presentation – as opposed to jamming 10 bullet points in one single slide.

One person replied that “But doing that, with one point per slide will increase the total number of slides into hundred. We’re supposed to keep it within twenty.”

Where do you suppose that “keep it within 20 slides” rule come from?

From the horse and buggy days when people were using 35mm carousels at conferences. Since a carousel could only take 80 slides and if there were 4 presenters, the organizer would have to limit each speaker to ‘NO MORE THAN 20 SLIDES”!

But now most computers that I am aware of can accommodate more than 20 slides, I suggest that the old 20-slide-limit rule be thrown out – together with the old horse whip and buggy.

You may have been doing it (cramming 5 bullet points into one slide) for 40 years. That means you have been doing it wrong for 40 years.

The time it takes to talk about 100 points is the same if you present them in 20 slides or 100 slides. You know – 100 pounds of steel weights the same as 100 pounds of cotton.

Go to my website and order a booklet on how to make great presentations.

Quit while you are ahead

During the French revolution three prominent, but very unfortunate, professionals were condemned to beheading by the guillotine: a priest, a doctor, and an engineer. The three were conveyed to the scaffold together in an old ox cart and were marched up to the guillotine together amidst amass of cheering blood thirsty spectators. The priest was the first to meet his fate. The executioner very politely asked the priest if he preferred to avoid seeing the blade fall by lying face down rather than face up. The priest replied, “I’ve led a good life, have nothing to regret, and want to meet my maker face-to-face.” So the priest lied down facing the blade. The executioner pulled the cord releasing the blade and it plummeted toward the priest’s exposed neck. But within a half inch of reaching its fatal destination the blade stopped literally in its tracks. The crowd roared with delight and many of the onlookers fell to their knees in prayer. Not wanting to put any victim to double jeopardy the authorities released the priest, to the great delight of the crowd.

Then came the doctor’s turn. He was asked the same question and thought “if it worked for the priest maybe it will work for me too,” so he requested to take the blade face up. Again the blade stopped a half inch from the target, and as with the priest, the authorities released the doctor.

Now was the engineer’s turn and, being no one’s fool, he also opted to take the blade face up. As he lay with his neck firmly placed in the crook of the guillotine and looked up to his maker, and to the blade, he exclaimed, “Ooh, I think I see your problem.”

Moral of the story: Quit while you are ahead. No pun intended.

Once you have made a point in a presentation, it is time to move on.

Full credit for this funny tale goes to Barry Trilling – a prominent attorney.

Never MIX your modes of communication

Here is someone who has a nice message to give to the world. But she combined a bunch of bullet points with spoken words. The result is total confusion.

She claimed she was using “subtitles” but she wasn’t.  And she was not reading a script verbatim either. She was speaking full sentences with a bunch of unrelated bullet points on the slides. That was very distracting because the readers cannot decide whether to ignore her spoken words and read the bullet points or close their eyes and just listen to her voice. Very confusing.

She had the worst of both worlds. It is literally like TWO persons “talking” at the same time – one with bullet points and one with sounds.

A FREE makeover

Send me one of your slides (with bullet points) and I will do a makeover for you. I will post the before and after slides here.