ADD PIZAZZ TO YOUR CONFERENCE PRESENTATION: Stage 2

This is the blog that could change your professional life as you now know it. Yeah right!! I wish I had something that profound to offer. Sorry, but no "black holes" like Stephen Hawking in my blogs!


Background-wise, I will tell you that I’ve taken beginning and intermediate full-day workshops on PowerPoint at my university. It is significant to note that in class sizes of about 30, I was the only faculty member on both occasions. Everyone else was an administrative assistant to a faculty member or administrator. That was 4 years ago. I learned the basic rules of slide composition and how to locate different features in the program. None of my “pizazz” questions was answered satisfactorily.


The purpose of this blog and the ones that follow is to pass on what I learned after those workshops from observing other PowerPoint presentations and from my own trial-and-error experimentation. Maybe you can use 1 or 2 ideas from the inventory of techniques I present that can save you buckets of time to learn on your own. Let me know whether any of the material is useful.


At this point, you have the content in some form on your slides with section headers. That’s exactly the way I begin to prepare any presentations. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that your audience is there for the substance. That is still the most important element, as it would be in the classroom if you are teaching. Anything else is a bonus. In other words, we are now focusing on BONUSWORLD. All of my suggestions apply to any conference as well as classroom presentation.


Stage 2


What can we now add on to the content slides that will bring the dead words to life and engage your audience of professionals or students? Your audience size may be 10 students in a doctoral seminar or 5000 attendees at a conference.


Here are my TOP 10 BONUS ADD-ONS to the content:


10. Color


9. Slide Movement


8. Letter and Word Movement


7. Simple Visuals


6. Complex Visuals


5. Sound Effects


4. Music Clips


3. Video Clips


2. Engagement Activities


And the Number 1 Technique


1. Humor



You can probably think of 10 more ideas. If so, please share, and I will pass them on in my blog and credit your contribution. Or, maybe you know most of these, but there’s 1 on this list you haven’t considered. Most of these techniques are simple add-ons. I am not a techie.


If your PowerPoint presentation were evaluated according to the Olympic criteria of TECHNICAL MERIT and ARTISTIC IMPRESSION, the former is Stage 1 (The WHAT) and the latter is Stage 2 (The HOW). The add-ons above involve some mechanical skill, but your artistic gifts are the most important. If you have experience in theatre, playing a musical instrument, singing, dancing, drawing, painting, graphic design, photography, videography, stand-up comedy, or related gifts, this is your opportunity to release them and let them shine in your presentation. Use your artistic creativity and imagination.

If you integrate your gifts into your PowerPoint, it will make your presentation uniquely YOU and set it apart from the rest of the pack. The audience will remember the WHAT because of HOW you delivered it.


Future blogs will put flesh on the bones of my TOP 10. Let me know your reactions on this artistic journey.


COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC