“NEW PowerPoint® DIET!: Top 10 Steps to a More Svelte PowerPoint®”—The Rest of the Story

Are you still trying to cram, stuff, squish, or shoe horn every bit of text onto every slide? Stop it. NOW! Read the remaining 4 steps, then go back to shoe horning.

POWERPOINT® DIET (continued)
Here are the remaining steps of the diet and a few thoughts on its impact on learning, memory, and engagement:

7. Repeat steps 4, 5, and 6 for each slide in order to distill the essence of each slide and draw your audience into your itty-bitty text and focus their eyeballs on the main point (NOTE: Keep in mind your audience may be thinking “get to the point,” if you don’t.)

8. Your draft Presentation Deck should tell your story or convey the low-fat, meat or tofu of your message concisely

9. Edit this deck to streamline what your audience will see to grab their attention from the get-go and what you will say in the presentation; draw your audience in by highlighting key words or phrases with a contrasting color, larger font, italics, bold, etc., and inserting engagement activities

10. Edit your Handout Deck so it covers exactly the material you want in the format you want; think like your audience to determine what and how the content should be included

You now have a skinny, svelte PRESENTATION DECK for your presentation and a fat, blubbery HANDOUT DECK for your audience. You have what you need to maximize learning, memory, and engagement of your audience during the presentation; your audience has the amplified content to read and study after you’ve made your points, plus space for fill-ins, exercises, and notes during your presentation.

Now isn’t that a more efficient and effective strategy to communicate your content than trying to present 1 monster blubbery deck on the screen, which will be difficult to present and nearly impossible to comprehend and remember? Think about it. The PRESENTATION DECK is like a CliffsNotes version of the handout. Who doesn’t prefer a short, concise, right-to-the-point dose first compared to the full-blown blubbery version?

For several articles on the research and more detailed practices for PowerPoint® presentations, go to http://www.pptdoctor.net.

I hope you find these suggestions useful in your work. Let me know your thoughts.


COPYRIGHT © 2011 Ronald A. Berk, LLC

“NEW PowerPoint® DIET!: Top 10 Steps to a More Svelte PowerPoint®”

CHRONIC TEXTYITUS
The answer to the multiple-choice item from the previous blog is “E.” It can be any of those reasons and many others. The problem is there is too much text. If you are afflicted with this infirmity of chronic “Textyitus,” proceed to my diet; otherwise, you can bail.

POWERPOINT® DIET
Guess what? Yup, it’s D I E T time! Those are 4 of the most hated letters in our vocabulary. You can do this. It requires only 10 simple steps. Once you implement this diet, you won’t even recognize your PowerPoint®. It will be a “PowerPoint® Makeover." You'll be cured forever of Textyitus.

In order to lop off excess text from each slide so that your audience will learn, remember, and be engaged in the content you present, follow this step by step:

1. Start with your text-bloated slides with all of the content, exercises, fill-ins, and note spaces (If you don’t have any, get some)

2. Consider these slides DECK #1, which will be a draft of the handout you will distribute to your audience; they need the details to read, study, review, take notes, and process after your presentation

3. Use this Handout Deck to create DECK #2, which is your much abbreviated, slimmed down Presentation Deck

4. Take each slide and ask yourself: “Self, isn’t this bloated blog with a stupid diet metaphor over yet?” WROOONG! “What’s the point of this slide?”

5. When you figure out the main point from all of the text, type a couple of short sentences or a FEW bullet points on your clean slide to emphasize what you want your audience to learn and remember (NOTE: 1 main point per slide, plus any relevant engagement activity, if appropriate)

6. Edit the content on the “New & Improved” slide and, even better, consider adding a visual image (still, animated, or video) to punctuate your point or replace part or all of the text


OOPS! I’ve exceeded my word limit. My next blog will finish the remaining 4 steps. You don’t want to miss the desserts on this diet.

For several articles on the research and more detailed practices for PowerPoint® presentations, go to http://www.pptdoctor.net.

I hope you find these suggestions useful in your work. Let me know your thoughts.

COPYRIGHT © 2011 Ronald A. Berk, LLC

“NEW PowerPoint® DIET!: A Must Try for ALL PowerPointers”

What kind of diet could this possibly be? We all know from Dr. Oz and the PBS fundraising-drive, brain-and-body guys (NOTE: So far no women docs. Why?) that diets don’t work. But we do know that all diets involve cutting back or out certain foods (aka “everything that tastes good”) and substituting other foods (aka “food that tastes bad or has no taste,” like a tofu sandwich on a Styrofoam rice cake, which is barf on a stick).

POWERPOINT PROBLEM
So how does this semi-humorous diet chit-chat relate to PowerPoint®? Great question! It has to do with the major complaint about PowerPoints®:

A June 2011 survey of the U.S. adult population (3.2% margin of error) by IBOPE Zogby International (Allen, 2011) concluded that “death by PowerPoint^®” is a national epidemic and called for a presentation revolution. Too much text and boring graphics top the list of frustrating and uninspired features. Can you relate to those findings? PowerPoint^® ranks as one of the most dreaded presentation platforms, with respondents claiming they would rather forego sex tonight (24%), do their taxes (21%), go to the dentist (20%), or work on Saturday (18%) than have a close encounter of the PowerPoint^® kind. (QUESTION: Does that mean the other 76–82% had sex, refused to do their taxes, let their teeth rot, and went sailing on Saturday?)

TOO MUCH TEXT

Why is there too much text on PPT slides?

A. The presenter slaps the whole presentation on the slides and uses the text as a crutch

B. The presenter doesn’t know the material well enough to slap only a little text on the slides

C. The presenter doesn’t prepare a separate handout with the detailed text

D. The presenter hasn’t read my latest article, which reviews the research on cognitive overload; the audience cannot possibly understand and remember a bucket of text on each slide 

E. ALL OF THE ABOVE

For the answer to the above test item and details on the PowerPoint® Diet, tune in to my next blog.

For several articles on the research and more detailed practices for PowerPoint® presentations, go to http://www.pptdoctor.net.

COPYRIGHT © 2011 Ronald A. Berk, LLC 

“SECRET FORMULA for ‘THRILLER’ PowerPoints®”

Over the past 6 months, I completed a blog series, 3 articles, and 6 YouTube videos on PowerPoint^®. It is a challenging medium for presentations, but it is the industry standard in teaching, speaking, and business. I don’t know of anyone who is satisfied with his/her PowerPoint^®. It can always be improved.

VIDEO SERIES on PowerPoint^®

In the recent video series, I have attempted to create examples of PowerPoint^® formats, particularly with multimedia, that anyone can do with their version of PowerPoint^® for free. You don’t need a degree in graphic or instructional design or technology to produce effective PowerPoints^®. The latest video is the most basic, demonstrating how you can transform a simple dead word on a slide and add color, animation, music, still image, and video to improve the learning from a slide. While there are tons of tutorials, this is my 3-min. attempt: VIDEO

Let me know whether this is helpful.

HAPPY POWERPOINT!

COPYRIGHT © 2011 Ronald A. Berk, LLC