Visual Aids - Love them or hate them!

How come so many of us fail to consider our experience as an audience when we are putting together a presentation? Long before we are asked to make a presentation, the chances are we have sat through  at least a few- some good, some bad, but why don't we learn?

Take so-called visual aids. Don McMillan has a great clip on YouTube called Death by PowerPoint. OK, it's a bit far fetched, but most of us can identify things in his clip that we did in our last presentation and will probably do again in our next one! 

Who are the visual aids supposed to help? Us, as presenters, or our audience? It sounds overly simplistic, but you have to decide before you start putting your presentation together. In fact, remember that putting your visual aids together happens AFTER you have prepared your presentation content. The visual aids are part of the medium, but they are not part of the message. How many slides do you think you can properly present for every ten minutes of your presentation?  I'll guarantee you have just over estimated the real number!

Here's two guidelines for you:

• When you rehearse (you were planning to rehearse right?) plan to speak for say 10% less time than you actually have available (not including question time)

• Take out about a third of the slides you put together when you started. Again, you will almost certainly have overestimated the number of slides that you need. It's a talk - not a movie!

Then all you have to do is learn what is on the slides and how it relates to the needs of your audience!