Presentations

I spend much of my professional time creating and delivering presentations using PowerPoint. Most I give myself, but I also create them for sales to deliver to customers. I definitely have my own opinions about how it should be done, what makes a good presentation, etc. And this video from cnet does a pretty good job covering the basics and biggest mistakes people make.



I must admit that I am often guilty of making my bullets too long and wordy, though not compared to many people. My only defense is that customers often want a copy of the presentation, and so without my lovely speaking voice to accompany the slides, the whole thing does have to stand up on its own. Sure, a recorded and saved webinar or voice-over would compensate, but no one I know wants to sit through those more than once. And it definitely doesn't work with internal sales presentations.

I also never use embedded video--my topics do not lend themselves to it.

To the second-to-last point, "Type matters," I have this to add: Use the effing template. I cannot tell you how many hours I've spent fixing presentations whose templates have been ignored or abused. Spending the initial time to design a good template not only saves a lot of time later, but provides a consistent look to all future presentations as well. But you knew that.