Smallest Presentation Hack Ever

May 3 by | 26 comments | Communication | Tags: , , , , ,

Ready? Here you go:

Don’t. Read. Your. Dumb. Slides.

Long version:

I’m at a pitchfest of an event, and people have come up one after another doing this basic performance over and over again:

“Hello, my name is _____. I’m the CEO and founder of ShinyNewSite.tv. At ShinyNewSite.tv, we believe in maximizing your efficiency through enhancing your brand and building your… Our mission is…”

What? Hello? Where am I? Oh wait. I think I read a slide that was essentially 300 words on your mission statement, using something like all 300 to try and tell me what you and your marketing team made up.

Communication is about CONNECTION

If you learn NOTHING else from me about communication, presentation, or whatever in hacking your own life, building your own value to the world, please learn this: connect. Connect with the people you’re trying to communicate with. Build something between us, no matter how short your time is.

How?

  • Think about who I am. And then build your presentation (conversation, blog, whatever) with me in mind.
  • Acknowledge that you want MY attention. Try hard to keep it by cutting out the fat.
  • Wake me up by saying something in a different way, or say it in a way that sounds like I wrote your slide for you (meaning we’re on the same wavelength).
  • Don’t skip the foreplay, but don’t bore me.

Am I Being Too Demanding?

Hell no. ATTENTION is my most scarce resource. If I’m going to be sharing space, or reading, or learning, or taking some time out of my life to pay attention to your presentation (email, blog post, podcast), you owe me. You owe me your best attempt at saying something that connects with me.

Smallest presentation hack ever?

Dont. Read. Your. Dumb. Slides.

Chris Brogan isn’t always this cranky. He keeps a blog at [chrisbrogan.com]

Chris Brogan writes about self-improvement and creativity at [chrisbrogan.com]

  • http://www.christopherspenn.com Christopher Penn

    I had a similar experience at a conference I was at last week. After enduring the first presentation of the day, I pulled open Keynote and deleted every word on 19/20 slides, and replaced them with appropriate Flickr Creative Commons licensed photos. The presentation was far more powerful for it.

  • http://www.reddeerblog.com Eduardo

    and skip the powerpoint presentation, not much bugs me more than someone reading off of a powerpoint display..

    Truthteller site
    http://www.reddeerblog.com

  • http://podcastusermagazine.com Linda

    And for heaven’s sake, look me in the eye(s).

    Edward Tufte should be required reading for anyone within ten feet of an LCD projector.
    -L.

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  • http://autiomaa.org Daniel

    Indeed, it’s pain to listen somebody reading slowly same text that you could read ten times more faster yourself.

  • Thomas

    Reminds me of the great article “Let There Be Stoning”:

    http://www.geol.wwu.edu/rjmitch/stoning.pdf

  • http://thrsnblmn.wordpress.com/ Dean Pribetic

    This is SPECTACULAR advice. At my place of work it’s like people shoot up PowerPoint in the toilets!

    What’s more – nearly every presentation is the same – ‘Here are my slides, let me read them to you’. Grrr!

    I will be forwarding your link to everybody I encounter who is guilty of this crime against society.

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  • http://www.usingmainlyspoons.com Louise M

    Seth Godin should also be required reading. He recently republished his Really Bad Powerpoint post.
    I’ll be going through Powerpoint hell again today when we have our monthly company update – they should never have been given the projector.

  • http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/ Dan York

    Chris,

    Great advice. Here’s another piece of that:

    Tell. A. Story.

    We’ve been telling stories since the those first tribal campfires, yet today too many people stand up and blather on without engaging the audience at all.

    Like you said, *attention* is a scarce resource. Figure out how to hold that and make it worth your listener’s time. So what if you talking about some really esoteric widget. Tell a story about someone using that widget to make their life (or world) better. (And if you can’t tell such a story, perhaps that points to larger problems with your widget!)

    Here’s an example of telling a story that I did recently on something as niche as “VoIP security” that turned out very well: http://www.blueboxpodcast.com/2007/03/blue_box_se_15_.html

    The challenge is, of course, that putting a story together like that is *hard* to do. It’s a whole lot easier to just throw a bunch of text fragments onto a slide as bullets and be done with it. Turning that into more of a cohesive “story” takes time, something else we don’t have a lot of these days. But it can be worth it!

    Tell. A. Story.

  • http://gischeleman.com Doug Haslam

    Here’s a tip– don’t put words on your slides– they’re slides– as in slide show– as in pictures.
    Last PPT I had to make on my own, I had single words on each slide to accompany a graphic– I was talking dammit the pictures were backing me up.
    Seemed to work well.

  • http://talkitup.typepad.com Heidi Miller

    Hear, hear! You should’ve heard the gasp that when through the room when I told the COC people not to use PowerPoint and in particular, not to use bullet-pointed slides.

    “But how will we ever communicate??” seemed to be the murmur.

    Um… how did we communicate before PP? We told stories. We told jokes. We had conversations. We laughed; we cried; it was better than Cats.

    Oh, wait. Anyway, we managed to communicate before bullet points, and we’ll do it even better once we ditch them.

  • http://gischeleman.com Doug Haslam

    Heidi– before PPT we used overheads (groan)

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  • http://www.hotpepper.ca/ Kim Siever

    Can we read the smart slides?

  • http://inoveryourhead.net julien

    nice thought on this, chris. by the way, something needs to be done about the adsense on this site.

  • http://justinkownacki.blogspot.com Justin Kownacki

    What, not ONE Power Point apologist?…

    I now feel validated in my own personal seminar approach, which is called “Winging It.” (I’m considering a patent.)

  • http://horses.com JuiceCan ClownSki

    To late Justin, I just patented it right after I read your message.
    Thats what you get for saying your patent out loud – nothing.

    Patent’ing “Winging It” ? Patent my balls. On yur chin.

    PowerPoint slows down communications: shed it. More data to a co-worker can be transmitted in a single photo than a single word. Stick to visuals using visuals – like pictures. You have a visual tube, to put words on. … again nice one Justin.

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  • http://www.sauravverma.com nitin sharma

    i am giving a ppt on the topic of email hacking ,
    can u send me some pdf or power point slides or any other type of data material
    thanks

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