Seven Keys

The following information was derived from an article by Carmine Gallo.  Reprinted here without permission, but I encourage you to learn more about her by doing a Google search. Ethan Hale The Seven Keys to Perfect Presentations From design to pacing to follow-through, these tips will attract your audience and keep it engaged from the first slide to the last. By Carmine Gallo When it's time to prepare a presentation, many of us who use presentation software fail to use the tools as effectively as possible.  At the same time, we want our presentation to wow our audience and sometimes forget that a compelling narrative is as important as an uncluttered visual design. Recently, I sat down with staffers from Duarte Design, the firm behind Al Gore's presentation on global warming that became the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.  The staffers offered valuable ideas about how to turn any presentation into a multimedia powerhouse.  Of course, not all of us are going to be able to afford an outside firm like Duarte, but its approach applies to all presentations.   Start with a Sketch Your goal should be to make the data in your presentation come alive visually and to help the audience interpret the information clearly.  Before you begin, know what you want to achieve, and sketch the concept you are trying to get across for the presentation as a whole as well as for each slide.  One Theme, One Slide Resist the temptation to give your audience all the information on one slide.  Stick to one key point or theme per slide.    Crunch the Data First All too often, audiences are presented with mountains of data and expected to figure it out. But the audience does not need to see all the data points.  What they need to understand is the correlation between the data points— what the numbers are trying to say.    Create a Narrative Presentations should be opportunities to engage the audience emotionally.  Great presentations have ebbs and flows, like great movies.  In a movie, for example, you wouldn't expect the entire plot to unfold in the first minute.  The same goes for a presentation.  It should build up to a key moment when all the information comes together.    Maintain a Visual-Verbal Balance Maintain a balance between the speaker and the information on the slides.  At times, the audience's attention should be focused on the content of the slide.  But at other times, their focus should be on you.  Make sure the slides complement the speaker visually without distracting from the power of his words.    Practice Design, Not Decoration The goal of a presentation is to solve problems.  Slides that are aesthetically pleasing allow the audience to understand the solution the speaker is offering.  Do not "exhaust the eyeballs" with animation.    Extend the Presentation Beyond the Moment An effective presentation's impact goes beyond the actual delivery.  The ecosystem of a presentation requires the speaker to attract the audience by building up excitement about the topic, engage them during the presentation itself, and extend the experience after the presentation through complementary materials, handouts, and calls to action.