So much charisma and comedic timing in such a little package.
Sure, it’s also well-written and well-edited. But still. I love this kid.
And I love his message.
The world needs you to stop being boring. Yeah, you. Boring is easy. Anybody can be boring.
You’re gooder than that.
If you give a presentation today (or tomorrow or the next day), make sure to give one that will make the world more awesome.
(Hat tip to my mother-in-law for finding this.)
Trying to put everything you know about something into your next speech is one of the most common presentation mistakes you can make. Instead, figure out what your audience wants most and save the rest for next time or never.
If you’ve been asked to speak to a group of people, it’s because someone believes that you know something about a topic that’s useful to them. Whether it’s a five minute speech on how to use the office coffee maker, a thirty-minute summary of the company’s financials for last quarter, or an all-day seminar on knitting, the chances are good that you know more about your subject than will fit into your allotted time. While at first this may seem daunting it’s actually a blessing.
You know a lot about your topic because it interests you. You can’t get enough of it. You love it. And that’s good. But trying to say everything you know about a topic in one presentation isn’t just impossible, it’s not helpful to your audience.
Instead of succumbing to the temptation to tell your audience every little detail, you need to decide on the main ideas you want to get across. The number of main ideas will vary for each speech you give based on the length of time you have to speak and the complexity of the ideas you want to cover. You might have time for 10 points or you may only have time for one or two. But deciding up front which ideas are most important to your audience will help you decide what facts, figures, and stories stay or go.
Once you have your main ideas in place, only add enough supporting information or evidence to make the case. You probably could go on all day about why each point in your speech is a good idea. But once you’ve convinced your audience, you should stop talking about it and move on. Saying more may lead your audience to stop listening, and could even undermine your credibility. Giving too much evidence can actually make you seem defensive, like you might be hiding something.
Feeling the need to say everything can be daunting, and knowing that you can’t fit everything you know into any speech ever can actually be comforting. No one expects to hear everything you know, and frankly, no one wants or is able to hear it all at once anyway. By taking the time to organize and edit your thoughts into an order and size your audience can handle, you’ll save yourself a lot of mental anguish. And your audience will appreciate it as well.
A week or so ago, my Aunt, who works at SUNY Binghamton, sent this video of a commencement address recently given there to my Grandmother who sent it to my Dad (I think that’s the progression) who shared it with me while he was in town for a visit. I expected it to be good since so many people I love were sharing it, but I didn’t expect Dad and I to be so emotional by the end.
I won’t add any of my own commentary for now. I just invite you to take twenty minutes or so to watch it when you have a chance.
Here’s a great TED Talk in which John Bohannon offers a simple alternative to terrible PowerPoint (in the style of Jonathan Swift).
This was a really fascinating TED talk, but the part that really got me was when John introduces his modest proposal.
“I think that bad PowerPoint presentations are a serious threat to the global economy,” he says. To which the crowd chuckles, then erupts into applause and cheering. That statement got the biggest audience reaction of the whole talk.
The world already knows that PowerPoint is boring. They’ve accepted, unhappily, that this is just the way things are. But that doesn’t mean they like it.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Authors like Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte have shown us how to be better. WAY better. But it’s still not something that many people are aware of.
We need to spread the word that there’s a better way! So that people who are still PowerPointing in the dark ages will see the light. The first step to getting things to change is helping people realize that there’re alternatives to terrible presentations.
And the best way to get them to see that is to make your presentations remarkable. We’ll change the world’s thinking, one audience at a time. We can! And we must!
Because I am really NOT much of a dancer.
You can spend weeks, and months, and years reading and re-reading books and blog posts and articles on presentation design. But when it comes time to create your next presentation, how do you keep all that great information in your head all at once?
Michael Pollan simplified the incredibly complex answer to the question “What should I eat?” in his book, In Defense of Food:
Dave Ramsey helps people become wealthy with his 7 Baby Steps:
So what would a list of presentation design rules look like?
Here’s are some I came up with for the design phase. (Maybe I’ll do content development and delivery in another post.)
