Michael Alley has investigated an alternative to the default PowerPoint slide layout, which he terms the “assertion-evidence design.” This approach employs succinct sentence headlines (sentences that make an assertion) at the top of the slide. Under it, in the main section… Read More »Make your PowerPoint headlines sentences
A bunch of great people (and great presenters) in big pharma told me one of their challenges is re-doing PowerPoint decks for presentations to different levels of management. When they get a PowerPoint deck done to their boss’s satisfaction (they happen to… Read More »Presenting up the chain of command
In the idyllic vision of the uninitiated, a scientific presentation tells a story, starting with a clear description of a problem, then outlining a series of steps taken to address that problem, and ending with a special reward: a glistening… Read More »How science presentations should work, but don’t
I recently came across Lillipip, a company that creates animated videos about your product, service, or concept. Check them out. They have a simple storyboarding template of four blank squares. In the first, you draw or paste a picture of… Read More »Storyboarding your presentation
Harvard and Google got married (NY Times article, Fri Dec 17) and have given birth to a database containing all the words in all the books published between 1500 and 2008 in English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese and Russian. You—yes… Read More »Counting the words that count in high stakes presentations
Many presenters begin their talks like this: “I’d like to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about…” Don’t do this. First of all, what you would like to do at that particular moment is of considerably less interest… Read More »Presenters should avoid this opening phrase