Okay this seems frivolous, but, …. What’s the best way to present a cartoon during a presentation?

I’ve been subjected to the deadly.slow.reading.that.drains.the.cartoon.of.all.humor, as well as the too long/too short minute of silence that apparently lets us mourn the death of another cartoon during a presentation.

Are cartoons just impossible to present to a group? If not, how?

When you give people handouts, they DO often read through them, flipping ahead and back. This is a good thing! Your audience is actively working to understand the material you are presenting — drawing connections, making comparisions, and seeing the bigger picture instead of seeing just one slide’s worth in isolation before it disappears.

This assumes the purpose of your talk is to convey information (to teach). Handouts might not be such a good idea if the purpose of your talk is marketing — which Tufte’s essay describes this way: “fast pace, misdirection, advocacy not analysis, slogan thinking, branding, exaggerated claims, marketplace ethics.”

As a long time teacher and lecturer, I usually detest the use of PowerPoint and overhead presentations for they are often a time-waster and also a crutch for poor public speakers and teachers. Just as some students feel they simply must have paper in their hands with an outline, summaries, glossary, charts and what-all, some lecturers must have a device or media method to bolster their own confidence in presentations. When I teach, I tell the group not to worry about taking notes – I submit my outline and all resources, links and documents referenced online in a public website. I find this approach to be most effective for me and comforting to the group as well. Think how individualized this approach is! If someone really wants to hold paper, they can download and print. If someon worries they will forget key points – hey, it stays online for them.

Just don’t hit them in the eye.

I’m pleased that there’s been a bit of a PowerPoint backlash lately. When I helped my father-in-law set a presentation for a recent talk to insurance people about dentistry, I suggested that he just use pictures. We made it up with JPEGs in HTML — Web pages, which have the benefit of being easy to put online.

I’ve been trying to keep track of other useful links about how to improve (or replace) PowerPoint for presentations. Perhaps it’s time for some sort of online resource.

Even if you have handouts, you can still use a laser pointer. You just point at one of the attendee’s handout’s, or their nose, or the water pitcher, or randomly about the room. Use the objects in the room to illustrate your point. “Say Lisa’s notepad is the server, and Frank’s coffee mug is the warehouse…” {wiggle the laser between the two to illustrate}. You get the idea.

Handouts are bad for the environment and they kill a lot of trees. Even if you had a recycling box at your presentation, what about the people who take the handout home, sift through it and then toss it in the trash?

It’s also a lot of work to put those things together, and what if you needed 300 of them? Time is better spent on polising up your public speaking skills rather than hanging out at Kinkos. -alisa@softarc.com

I am sick of PowerPoint slides that have a lot of text on them, presumably for ease of publishing later to the Web.

I think the issue with PowerPoint is a chicken or egg situation. Did PowerPoint degrade the user’s communication and presentation skills or did it fit in with already degraded skills?

I see many presentations where the speaker is obviously not prepared and has made the slides a crutch to rely on. He is constantly facing the screen and reading aloud. I’ve thought slides were best when you used them as a signposting method: showing your audience where you’re going and where you’ve been.

However, I agree that that function is readily provided verbally in a good, prepared speech.

When you give your audience handouts, sometimes people read through (and play with) the handouts instead of paying attention to your talk.

I don’t really have a problem with PowerPoint-based bullet points per se any more than I have a problem with a college professor writing on a chalkboard to emphasize some particular point he is trying to make.  When bullet points are used relatively sparingly, and when they’re well-thought-out, they can enhance the impact of a lecture.