A couple of days back i chanced to look at Slideshare a site for sharing your slideshows with others in the planet. Initially I was wondering why would someone share his/her slideshow at all in the first place and that too publicly.

I suddenly saw that this could be some kind of a personal intranet where one could make available one’s own presentation to the peers, friends and well-wishers and ask them to give inputs or feedback for improvement.

And as i waded through the site, I saw more of that. Instances where teachers upload their presentations for the students and event managers uploading the presentations that were made at the event. Then all they needed was to give a link to the students or to the participants and they can just check it out. No more emails with heavy duty attachments and no need to make a CD and send it across to the participants. I thought ‘wow’.

And as I was mulling over this concept of sharing presentations, I said to myself “hey this is good! but what about the presentations themselves? If they are inherently boring or insipid, it doesn’t make sense to share them at all!”

I started speculating on ‘What makes a presentation interesting or on the flip side, what would make it totally boring?’ and a flash of all lousy presentations that I have watched at various fora filled my vision.
There are 2 ways to learn. One is by watching great presentations and take what appeals to you. Alternatively, you can watch potentially dynamite concepts or ideas vapourize because of a pathetic presentation.

We will now look at the elements of the latter. Given the number of awful presentations that we watch quite often, there is no real need to advise people on how to make such slideshows? Rather they are already masters in that art!!

The intention is to bring awareness to what is happening from the audience’ perspective so that we can dramatically improve the quality and impact of our presentations.

So here we go!
1. Too too too muccccccccccccccccccch text in the slides

This is the biggest killer of any interest. All of us have been subjected to presentations where slide after slide contains hundreds of words (and that too in pretty small fonts). On top of it, the presenter apologizes for so much of text that we cannot read. Each slide is a story or part of a story and it doesn’t help to have reams of text or data flowing all over!

2. There’s nothing but text.

Although we have heard that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, that hasn’t really sunk in, especially in presentations. not only that there is lot of text but there is nothing else except text. People did not come there to read from a distance as if at an ophthalmologist’s practice!

3. The presenter reads every word in the presentation.

wow! this is a favourite of mine! when the guy at the podium starts reading every slide, i feel as if we are all illiterate or plain blind and that makes the user experience even more awful. i have at occassions wanted to stand up and shout into the mike ‘hey! we can read all that well! what do you have to say about all those that are already written?” but restrained myself at the last minute out of simple civility (if there is a word like that!!). it is even ok that the guy reads it aloud verbatim but it is certainly not done when he does just that and nothing more!!

4. Too many links and hyperlinks!

it is really nice to have some links once in a while but when it becomes innumerable, then the presenter is obsessed or concerned only about going somewhere else and coming back that he / she has totally lost the audience. sometimes the links are not tested and then there is chaos all over. it is bad enough that the audience is confused but it is really worse when the presenter is totally clueless!!
5. Speed and timing of the slides.

it is very common that while the presenter is in slide x, what we see is x+3 or so. so far as the guy is not aware of it, it is fine and the audience is ahead of the game. but when he / she realizes that they are neither in x nor in x+3, the result is a comic tragedy!!

Enough of it for now!