One of my side hobbies is studying how to give more effective presentations in particular with PowerPoint. Which to some of you I know seems like a lost cause but reality is that presentations to make or break many deals.
And one of my favorite blogs on this topic is Speaking about Presenting.
In a recent post they reminded their readers that when presenting there are 3 types of content we are delivering:
1. What you say
2. The slides you show
3. The handouts you give out
Personally I think the root cause of "death by PowerPoint" comes down to:
1 - The natural feeling that you have to share everything you know on a topic in your presentation (and worse) - your slide deck
2 - The belief your audience is interested in the same level of detail and worse - that they can absorb all of the detail just by listening to your presentation
3 - The (mis-guided) belief that a slide deck is an effective hand-out/post-presentation collateral
I will address thoughts on presentation "hand-outs" in another post.
