There’s a revolution in the design of PowerPoint slides, but not the delivery. Here are five methods that will make the delivery of your PowerPoint presentation stand out. Most presenters click on the next slide, and then speak about what’s on the slide. Here’s an example Most speakers still rely on their slides to cue them. They click, they talk, click, talk, click, talk…

This is Your Brain on PowerPoint.  Loosely speaking, the left handles data, facts, and analysis. When it comes to experiencing a PowerPoint presentation, there's only so much your brain can process. You can either listen to a presenter speak, or you can try to read what you seen on the screen.  Our brains have 2 lobes. The right handles emotions, art, and intuition.

On Monday evening, I ran a PowerPoint Karaoke contest at the Cape Communicators Toastmaster Club. We had about 10 people who were each given a random deck of PowerPoint slides, and they were given about three minutes to present a presentation using their slides. It is a great way to both practise your impromptu speaking skills, and to have some practise with PowerPoint. This is the first one that I have ran, and it was a fantastic evening! It was all in good fun, and we had some very interesting takes on the topics.

"What would you like to see in PowerPoint design in 2009?" That's what Olivia Mitchell, who writes the fantastic Speaking About Presenting blog, asked me last month. Lots of great ideas!) My PowerPoint design wishes for 2009? The look and feel of social media techniques will transition into PowerPoint design. So what might this kind of PowerPoint design look Now, Olivia didn't ask just me: she also acted as community organizer, posing the question to a plethora of presentation bloggers. She asked us to write one post on this topic.

Conference attendees frequently request PowerPoint slides as handouts. If your PowerPoint has so much text and data that it can be used as a handout, then you're doing something wrong. Your PowerPoint is most effective when it's image-based with minimal text and enhances your presentation, as I've mentioned here , here and here . You can also learn more about effective PowerPoint at Dave Paradi's blog and at the BBP (Beyond Bullet Points) blog . Instead, provide handouts that: 1.

It is imperative that presenters get training on the basics of communicating a clear message and presentation skills in order to understand that PowerPoint should just be a tool to support their message, not the message itself. Presenters not being prepared The second most commented area was presenters who were not prepared either on the topic or the slides. Many comments talked about presenters who were not knowledgeable about the topic they were speaking about and relied on reading the slides since it was all they knew on this subject. I’ve already reported on what audiences find most annoying based on the survey completed by 548 people.

Inspired by Laura Bergells' recent PowerPoint propaganda post about changing fashions in PowerPoint, Olivia Mitchell pulled together a group of bloggers to participate in a group writing project about what we'd like to see in PowerPoint slide design this year. I could go on and on about how to make PowerPoint presentations more effective, but I'll stick to my top three suggestions for how I'd like to see speakers using PowerPoint in 2009 (you'll notice that I've strayed from the topic of "design" a bit). Check back at Olivia's blog next week (I'll remind you) for links to all the posts.

Seth Godin recently posted his Nine steps to Powerpoint magic . Powerpoint is for ideas. I understand that he's suggesting ten minutes for big ideas (your PowerPoint) and "the rest of your time" for talking, interaction and discussion, which I agree should make up the majority of a presentation. Most of the time, I don't even bother with PowerPoint for a presentation that short. Some of his "steps, not rules" are cheeky, like this one: "4. Pay by the word.

have to point you to another example of bad PowerPoint usage , posted by Dave Paradi. If you have decided to use PowerPoint in a presentation or you've been required to use it, and you're not sure if you know what you're doing, please get help. You run the risk of negating all the good work you've done in preparing your content by tripping over your PowerPoint and making your incompetence the center of attention. ...Tags: Oh dear. I

More on PowerPoint . . . Most of us really hate it when a speaker reads from her PowerPoint slides, but we may not know exactly why (besides the fact that she keeps her back to us the whole time and speaks like a robot). When we read, we are subvocalizing; that is, we are speaking the words in our heads. Subvocalization means "the act or process of inaudibly articulating speech with the speech organs" . In fact, various muscles associated with speech actually move imperceptibly when we are subvocalizing.