Open Thread: Your best tip on doing presentations
Submitted by Merlin on November 18, 2005 - 5:42am.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ll be leading a discussion on Tinderbox and “the trusted system” tomorrow. Probably running a few Keynote slides, but mostly just casually chatting with a small group of enthusiastic Tinderbox fans.
I’m not a seasoned public speaker by anyone’s estimation, so I’ve made my share of rookie mistakes in the past (hint: avoid doing a rambling, overlong talk without slides at ETech; people get confused, hungry, and eventually want to defenestrate you).
So, as I prep myself for tomorrow, I turn to you guys:
What’s your best presentation tip? What’s the “never break it” rule for PowerPoint/Keynote decks? What’s your favorite site, article, or link on great presentations? How do I get that Lessig-, Jobs-, or Veen-like fu that makes audiences so giddy? (Self-links are okay within reason here)
I’ll be over here imagining people in their underwear, but I’d love to hear your best advice on this stuff.
Update 2005-11-19 21:37:26
I’ve posted the slides from my talk today along with links to some of the posts and cool applications I mentioned.
Summary: went well! Very enthusiastic group – great questions and conversations. And no one threw rotten vegetables. Elin liked it, and that’s good enough for me. :-)
- Merlin's blog
- 45860 reads
Never, ever, put up a...
Never, ever, put up a slide and then read verbatim from it. I would go so far as to say that the slide and the commentary should each carry information not found in the other.
The best presentations I have ever seen were where the slides and the commentary were both precise and complete messages in themselves. They are linked, of course, but one should not be a transcript of the other.