by kvanhorn

Started by Carles Caño at presentástico, we bring you our take on the Presentation Alphabet.

A

- Audience. The audience is probably the most important part of your presentation, you’re giving it to them and for them; you want to influence them somehow. Here’s how you make an Audience Needs Map .

B

- Bullet points. The most common element in presentations worldwide, sadly. Bullet Points are for listing things, not for all your content. Read F… Bullet Points .

C

- Clarity. Achieving it in your presentation might not be that easy. Your message has to be understood quickly and clearly. Read Concept Slides

D

- Design. Something many presenters fear, or worse. Design is a part of our lives, you live surrounded by it. Take inspiration from daily things around you and think as a designer when making your slides. Don’t type your slides, design them. Read Can Coco Chanel teach you how to make better slides?

E

- Emotion. It drives people, include emotion in your presentation to cause your audience to act on your material. Presentation lesson from the dark side .

F

- Feedback. After every presentation you should get feedback from your audience and peers to see how to improve the next time. Olivia Mitchell has great advice on using the backchannel to get feedback and other cool things –How to manage the Twitter backchannel.

G

- Graphs. They can be very powerful tools to prove your point or very confusing slides that will confuse and distract. Sowing data effectively .

H

- Handout. Slides are not the right type of document to present information, instead of putting all your information on them, put only the necessary to make your point; you can give detailed information on a suitable medium after the presentation as a handout. Read When not to make a presentation.

I

- Idea. 1 idea on each slide, no more. Nick Smith from Advance your slides made a great presentation Don’t be a powerpoint felon. Guess what tip number one is.

J

- Jokes. They have their place, and it isn’t in a presentation. Use humor, not jokes. How to use humor in your presentations .

K

- Knowledge. If they’ve asked you to give a presentation on a subject it’s because you have knowledge about it, so don’t feel intimidated by who might be in the audience and give a great presentation.

L

- Learn. Always learn from presentations you’ve given. We can all improve at everything we do. There’s a great post by John at Presentation Advisors with 100 tips to learn how to make better presentations!

M

- Multimedia. Images, audio, video… Multimedia can really empower your message and engage your audience. Here’s an article to learn to embed Youtube videos in powerpoint .

N

- Numbers. Many times we’re faced with having to present a lot of data. Raw numbers don’t mean much to people; people find meaning in relationships. When you have to show numbers concentrate on the relationship between the numbers and what it means. For a great example check out Hans Rosling’s presentation on world population trends.

O

- Order. The structure of your presentation is what makes it understandable. Information has to flow naturally from one point to the next. Read Nancy Duarte’s Music has a structure. Your presentation should too.

P

- Project Presentation, of course Find us on Twitter, Facebook or SlideShare.

Q

- Questions. We all know we’ll get questions at the end of the presentation. But do you know what two questions to ask yourself before? Read this great article by Garr Reynolds.

R

- Rehearse. Rehearsal is the only way to perfection. Have you seen those presentations where the speaker seems so natural and to be improvising the whole thing? Those have the longest preparation! Read How to rehearse a presentation.

S

- Story. Use a story in your presentation to keep guide and keep your audience involved. Are your presentations memorable?

T

- Teasing. Tease before you tell. Create expectation from the audience; make them want to hear the rest. Look at how Dan Pink opens one of his presentations at TED

U

- Unlearn. We’ve all learned to use powerpoint in the way its basic template work (title on top and content on bullet points). One of the first lessons I learned from Garr Reynolds was to unlearn all of this and think of slides in a different way; curiously enough we’ve all heard this before from Yoda. Present like Yoda you can.

V

- Visuals. Slides are referred to as visual aids, not as presentation, not as speaker notes. If you’re using slides they should aid you in conveying your message, don’t type your whole presentation on them.

W

- Whitespace. Whitespace is the oxygen for the eye; it lets the eye “breathe” and focus on what’s important.

X

- Xperience (okay, I cheated). Including your personal experiences in your talk will give your presentation credibility and power. Read The magical ingredient by Phil Presents and watch the amazing talk by Scott Stratten in it.

Y

- You. You are the presentation, not your slides. Put yourself out there and don’t hide behind your slides.

Z

- Zen. Presentation Zen is a great website by my mentor, Garr Reynolds. He’s written plenty of material and books combining the elements of Zen and presentations, all very recommend if you want to learn how to create and give great presentations.

I hope you enjoyed the post, if you can come up with other words and links that have to do with presentations, leave it in the comments. Or create your own Presentation Alphabet and link to it!

Until next time,
Byron Stanford for Project Presentation.