A500.8.3.RB_HallMike

It is amazing how varied presentations can be.  Some are absolutely amazing in the way that they hold your attention while others are almost as effective as Nyquil at putting you to sleep.  As we saw in this week’s readings, I think that presentations are most effective when you use them as an aide during your discussion as opposed to it being the basis for your discussion.  As a result, I think keeping your presentations as simple as possible - with effective pictures - can do wonders at both maintaining your audiences’ attention and getting your point across.

 There is a fantastic saying in the Navy: Keep it simple, stupid.  I think that this is just as applicable for presentations as well.  Using a blue background with white lettering ensures that your text will be easily readable in any light situation.  Also, it makes the text much more easy (less harsh) on the eyes.  And speaking of text, the less text the better is the most preferred.  I learned this fact years ago in a technical writing class.  That class instructor would go crazy if you put more than 3 bullets on a single slide, and those 3 bullets had better not add up to more than 5 lines of text.  In this class we learned that even that might be too much text – each slide should only contain 1 main point.  The reason for this is pretty simple – if you have too much text, your audience will tune out your speaking and concentrate on what you have written on the screen.  While this is ok at times, especially since your main points/your takeaways should be the only thing you have in text, for the most part it isn’t due to the fact that you are verbally expounding on the main points.  If they aren’t listening, they will completely miss out on why what you have displayed is important, or what you learned about it, or whatever it is you are talking about.  Another added benefit of having small amounts of text is that it helps to prevent you from reading from the screen.

 Something else that gets to me at times is the use of bad or random clip art.  The presentation is supposed to help what you are trying to say.  If you use bad clip art/photos, I find my self almost discrediting the presentation as amateurish and of questionable material.  If on the other hand you use fantastic supportive photos that drive home the point you are trying to make, I will more easily remember what you are trying to say later since many people, including myself, are visual in nature.

 The different programs we were introduced to this week will definitely help in the long run, especially if I decide to sit down and really learn one or two of them to the depth that I have learned PowerPoint.  Specifically, any program that can help you create slides with video clips (I am thinking specifically about showing mouse movement on a screen to produce a step by step example) would be greatly beneficial if the situation needed it.