"You Suck at PowerPoint" - that was quite a title that originally caught my attention when I went to SlideShare.net one afternoon in early December last year. I was compelled and had to see why I sucked. And guess what? I definitely did.
Everything Jesse Desjardins (jessedee) said was wrong with presentations, I was guilty of doing or having done. I didn’t mean to. I just didn’t know any better. I didn’t get how to make them not suck.
I’ve always heard,
No bullet points!
No blocks of text!
Make it visual!
Make it interesting and memorable!
Okay, that’s great, but HOW do I do that?? Well, Jesse managed to show me what I was doing wrong and how to make it right all in one easy presentation.
We had an upcoming webinar where we were going to use a bullet pointed presentation and decided to overhaul it at the last minute. It took a huge investment of time because it was changing our thinking, learning a new skill, and re-working something all at the same time. There’s nothing like a little pressure to make it all come together, though, right?!
We did it and were thrilled with the result. And since then, our audiences have seemed to appreciate our efforts, as well.
Are we now design experts? Certainly not, but we sure enjoy creating presentations now rather than dreading putting more bullet points and logos on slides and trying to decide how many lines of text we can fit on each one.
As Jesse points out, “Your slides are there to support you, and unfortunately if they suck, so do you.”
We’ve made the commitment to not suck, and think you should too! Of course, if you’ve already got this figured out, then good for you and your audiences.
Do you have some great presentations or some tips to share & show us your skills? We'd love to see and/or hear about them!
