I’m working on several presentations at the moment that I hope I will be able to deliver at some upcoming conferences.
Like most people, in the past I have delivered presentations that largely consisted of dot points on a page, the occasional gag slide and Way. Too. Many. Words. That. I. Read. Straight. From. The. Slides. Asleep yet? No? Good. Let’s continue.
The secret to being a great presenter is to tell a story. That story should be related to the slides, but not come from the slides. It’s all to do with Cognitive Load Theory, a concept developed by Professor John Sweller of the University of New South Wales, right here in Australia.
What it boils down to is that if the information you’re seeing and the information you’re hearing are the same, you struggle to absorb it. However, if the visual and auditory inputs are related but not the same, you make a cognitive connection and learn more effectively.
Take a look at this presentation by Malcolm Gladwell from the TED Conference as an example. Malcolm is a consummate storyteller. There’s not a slide to be seen. It’s awesome.
You can also deliver truly great presentations with slides, but as I said above, make the slides related to what you are saying and not the script for your presentation. Here’s another example of a great presentation that has both slides and a good storyteller. This time, it’s Dick Hardt, CEO of sxip.com[1].
Great storytelling!
So I’m changing the way I do things. I am including little text on my slides these days, and carefully scripting my words so that the visual and auditory components of my presentations and working hard to be as good at this as Dick and Malcolm. I’ve a way to go, but already I’m making an impact and my presentations are better received.
Are you still a dot-pointer?
- You can see a hires version of Dick’s talk at http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/.
Yep, all good points. Steve Jobs is another good example of telling stories and using minimal text and high-quality images for his presentations.