Another lesson Garr Reynolds talks about in his presentations comes from comparing what Darth Vader and Yoda’s presentation styles would be like. Truth is, apart from funny and original, it’s a good explanation of what the Dark Side of Presentations would be like.

According to Garr, Darth Vader is rigid and cold, so his presentations would be boring.

Does the style look familiar? It’s the typical slide you seen in most presentations. It has all the points he’s talking about to convince the audience (Luke in this case) to come to his side. But as we all know Vader didn’t convince Luke to join him, but lost him by presenting his arguments in such a scripted way. Not that Vader memorized the reasons, but when we give a presentation it should sound more like a conversation than a script. That’s where Vader fails.

On the other hand, as Garr says, Yoda is a kind and sincere “person”, so his presentation style would be close and personal, speaking to the audience 1 on 1. He probably wouldn’t use slides, more like Sir Ken Robinson’s style, or he’d use ones with plenty of whitespace to avoid bombarding the audience with information. This is the style you want to follow. Yoda is a clear example of how to give a presentation that feels like a conversation.

How do you go from the Dark Side to being a Presentation Jedi? It’s about practice, when you practice your presentation enough to lose your fear of being yourself in front of the audience, you will turn into a communicator like Yoda and have an actual conversation with them.

Until next time,

Byron Stanford for Project Presentation.

Source: http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2006/01/contrasts_in_pr.html