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PowerPoint Presentation – Torture or a Powerful Multimedia Tool

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By Angie
Planning Stage
We have all had to sit through the boring PowerPoint presentations with too many charts, silly pictures, and text that goes on forever.
But what if I told you there is a better way. PowerPoint is a powerful multimedia tool that is beneficial, even to those with mad technology skills
However, before we can make the most of PowerPoint, we have to know what and why we are creating a presentation. So, let’s begin with the planning stage. You must ask yourself the following questions:
1.      What is the goal, the point?
a.       If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there?
b.      If you don’t know what your goal is, how can you expect your audience to know?
c.       Your goal should be specific, not vague. For example:
                                                              i.      Vague – to share information.
                                                            ii.      Specific – to share year end revenue gains and ways to increase revenue in the coming year.
d.      By knowing your specific goal you are able to create a more engaging PowerPoint.
2.      Who is my audience?
a.       Who will be participating in your presentation? Will it be co-workers, the public, students, or others?
b.      Your audience has an average attention span of 20 minutes. If you are a ‘talking head’ for an hour, you will have lost the majority of your audience after 20 minutes – if not before.
c.       However, there are ways to make your PowerPoint more engaging and to increase the audience’s attention. We will get to those in the coming blogs.
3.      Will this be a live presentation and/or will it be posted on-line to be viewed?
a.       This is extremely important as it will decide the layout and the interaction level of the PowerPoint.
b.      For a live presentation, you control how the audience interacts with your PowerPoint, what they will see, when they will see it, and so on.
c.       When it is posted, the audience member has some control of what they will see and when they see it.
4.      What is my walk away point? What do I want the participants to remember about the presentation?
a.       As a presenter, you will share a lot of information, but most people will walk away with only a couple of points. Think about the information you are sharing. What are the main points? What do you want the audience to remember the next day, the next week, and the next year?
Next Blog: Storyboards, PowerPoint & Audience Interaction

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