How to deliver an extremely boring presentation

Editor's Notes

• #16: PowerPoint as a Trainers Tool The top don'ts of PowerPoint's …. Having all the text on screen Means trainer is just simply reading from the slide making this a very dull, presentation and delivery style. Note that participants can read faster than you can talk through all the text on your slide. Cut down the text, more visuals – les text mean you have to more into the delivery and participants will then focus on the trainer more. 2. Spell Checks ‘Using RDD to process the IMS mean that most depts ppl or p’sel do not run spell Cheek’ try to avoid these errrs. Your presentation looks sloppy, poorly put together. Also, try to avoid using jargon. As with you verbal delivery, trainers must use simple conversational English to convey content. 3. Avoid excessive bullet points Just like text, using too many bullet points for a visual medium is dull and ineffective. They tend to be annoying. - If you are using bullet points, try to emphasize the point that your on, before moving to the next one. Keep them well spaced and try to keep it to one line. Trainers have to learn content management skills to do this. 4. Avoid using Cartoon Clipart (stuck in a corned of the slide). - In most cases, it just looks unprofessional and tacky. The positioning of most of these pictures is stuck in a corner not following any real rules of design of the slide and has little resemblance to the point being made. Try to use real pictures as much as possible and be bold with the pictures – PowerPoint is a visual medium. 5. Colour schemes Unless working on a corporate slide, try to watch for use of colour schemes, either as background colours or choice of templates. Most corporate templates are rather dull and use white, so you have to work within the confines of using white space. - try to blend colours of the same hue rather than hard contrasting colours. 6. Complicated Charts - To ensure all the data is there, most often, trainers pack in too much information making a chart – which should be simple to read- very complicated. - reduce charts down to a minimum – keep them very clear. 7. Pointless Animation Try to avoid pointless animation. Flying (typewriter sound effect) bullet points are not good uses of animation. In business and raining the animation should be subtle. Try to use it for transition between slides use it only to reflect motion or process or giving context to a scene 8 Font Type and Size Choose 1 or 2 fonts and stick with them – don’t choose too many fonts and make sure they are readable on an electronic media like PowerPoint. Also the size of the font is important – nothing should really fall below 24 pts. 9. Microsoft themed templates Poor templates and use of visuals means the slides become repetitive and visual boring after a while because of the way we have preconceived the way PowerPoint presentations to be. Imagine if you picked up a magazine and all the pages and layout were the same with lots of text and poor visuals. Default themes and backgrounds are usually ugly, so try not to use them. This media allows you to use some creativity. 10. Poor Visuals Either choosing the wrong picture to convey the message or using low res pictures. Also placement of visuals is poorly put in. - Follow basic rules of design such as the rule of thirds to assist in placement of text and visuals. PowerPoint is a visual media and should be exploited as such.
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