The other day I bumped into a colleague I had worked with at another agency. We got to talking about the first project we partnered on.  It was a slide presentation – a really bad one, as I recall, and I kind of put my foot in my mouth. I remember it clearly. We were looking at the sl

“What’s the big idea?” Surprisingly, people don’t get offended when I ask this question, and I ask it all the time. I guess it’s clear in context that I’m not upset when I ask it. Because the big idea is really important. It’s probably easier

I talk a lot about making things audience-centric, which is really just thinking about your audience, and giving them the information that’s relevant to them. And I often preach a message of simplicity (I probably sound like a broken record!) But part of making your presentation audie

Those that I work with know my general feelings about capabilities presentations. We wind up doing them a lot in advertising, and while I wouldn’t say they are a waste of time, I often feel they should be done with a different focus and objective. For those that don’t know, a ca

Recently, I’ve had several people mention a quote from Steve Jobs to me. “People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.” I think he makes an excellent point, though not exactly what the people mentioning it to me may have thought he was making. It

I encounter busy slides from time to time (often a lot of them in the same presentation), and the one thing they all have in common is that they represent the knowledge and research of the person that put them together. The presenter/author really knows their stuff. They could talk yo

Picture the scene: a presenter standing in front of their audience, reading from a list of bullets on the screen. Even if the audience was interested initially, they’re tuning the presenter out before long. The most frequent critique of this approach to presenting is to point out that

We’ve all been on one side or the other. If you’re in the audience, you’re trying not to yawn – and trying not to make it look like you’re trying not to yawn. If you’re presenting, it’s clear they are not engaged. You’ve created a beautiful presentation, and want them to know why your