Abstract

This is the first article in a series aimed at helping you to craft elegant and effective PowerPoint presentations.

This article will address:

• Brief history and evolution of PowerPoint
• PowerPoint's strengths
• PowerPoint's limitations
• Seven Golden Rules of PowerPoint
• Conveying your desired message effectively
• The use of templates

Following the completion of this article series, the readers will be able to:

• Create a PowerPoint presentation using the proper color combinations and fonts
• Effectively edit or 'redline' existing PowerPoint presentations and ensure that they comply with the established standards
• Speak to his/her PowerPoint presentation using bullets in the slides and notes in the speaker's notes

History of PowerPoint

Over 20 years ago, a small software company called Forethought developed the first version of PowerPoint aimed at creating simple overhead transparencies. In 1987 Microsoft purchased the software rights and introduced a DOS version. Since 1990, PowerPoint has been a standard part of the MS Office suite.

PowerPoint has continued to evolve through the different versions of Office and today offers hundreds of presentation styles, transition and animation possibilities.

PowerPoint's Strengths

PowerPoint is a very useful tool for helping good speakers and presenters become more effective in conveying a message.

These strengths include:

• Allows presenters to break down concepts into smaller "chunks" so that audiences can visually grasp each concept
• Excellent tool for illustrating by example
• Widely accepted and understood in the professional and academic community
• Compatible with other Microsoft Office products
• Easy to grasp

PowerPoint's Limitations

PowerPoint was not designed nor is it capable of doing the following tasks well:

• Word processing - use Word
• Teleprompting - prepare your speech and use your speaker's notes
• Organization Charts & Flow charts- Use Visio or CorelDRAW
• Low compatibility with other non-Microsoft products - few work well
• Tasks that require numerical analysis
• Picture shows - there is a way to do it, but there are dozens of better ways to show off your vacation photos.

Chris' Seven Golden Rules of PowerPoint

There is a tried and true expression that states, "Failing to plan is planning to fail!"

You wouldn't believe how many times I've seen someone writing his PowerPoint presentation at their desk or on a plane hours or even minutes before he is going to be presenting to an audience.

Rule Number ONE

Know your audience.

The list of things to know is nearly endless. A few examples may include:

• Are they technologically savvy?
• Will they understand your "acronym soup"?
• What is the range of ages in the audience?
• Does anyone in the audience have special needs? For example, colorblind?
• At what level will you be presenting — CEO or individual contributors or both?
• Will your competition be present in this meeting?
• Will you be presenting in front of an audience or speaking to your PowerPoint deck 'virtually' over a conference call or online presenter?

Rule Number TWO

Know your presentation flow and navigation.

You should be able to glance at your speaker's notes and comfortably speak to each without fumbling, mumbling, or stumbling.

This leads us to the third point...

Rule Number THREE

Be prepared for the worse case scenario.

For example:

• Is the overhead or LCD projector lamp going to burn out? - Have hard-copy handouts with speaker's notes prepared just in case.

  Note: Later in this article, I will stress the importance of speaking to each point one at a time. Presupposing that the projector works and you still provide hard-copy handouts, you run the risk of your audience reading ahead and tuning you out. So if you do show up with hand outs, you may wish to give them to your audience AFTER your presentation - this is purely a matter of personal preference.

• Prepare to get the 'blue screen of death' on your PC moments before you have to go into your meeting - As mentioned before have hard-copy back up or better yet, post a backup copy to a shared drive or put it on a disk or jump drive to use on someone else's computer.

  Note: Another chronic problem people do not anticipate when crafting PowerPoint presentations is that they fail to realize that the fonts on their PC may not be the same as those on everyone else's. In other words, if you find that perfect Halloween font, it will probably show up on everyone else's computer as Times New Roman or Arial anyhow. Even worse, if you are using another languages font, your audience might be looking at a whole bunch of strange Latin fonts with symbols, accent graves, A-E ligatures, tildes, etc.

Rule Number FOUR

Anticipate questions and have your replies and rebuttals prepared.

Later in this article, we will discuss how to refine your presentation to simple bullet points. If you anticipate questions and know your data well, you will be able to speak to these bullets and defend them well.

For example, if you are presenting facts and figures, know the source of said information or graph and be prepared to defend your point. If you have done some analysis and have quoted the 'Average' number of something, be prepared to explain if your numbers were the mean, median, or mode and know your standard deviations, etc. If you have done elasticity studies and are forecasting based on these studies, be prepared to explain in detail (when asked) how these figures were derived. These rules apply to case studies, focus groups, etc.

Rule Number FIVE

Err on the side of Less is more — especially if you are presenting to high-level executives. By this I mean, on your PowerPoint presentation, keep it short and sweet. "Just the facts Ma'am…"

Have your source information handy in case someone asks for more details or clarification. In fact, as you become more advanced in PowerPoint, you can have multiple versions of the same presentation ranging from high-level to robust and detailed that you can summon at a click of a button depending on your audience. We'll address this in future articles in this series.

Rule Number SIX

Cheesy is bad. Simple and elegant is good.

What is Cheesy? Examples include:

• Silly sound effects (especially the dozen or so that come built into PowerPoint)
• Most clipart — if the clipart does not help to illustrate your point, don't put it in.
• Ridiculous slide transitions and animation schemes such as the 'typewriter' where each character painfully appears one at a time.

Unless you are presenting to a class of third-graders or a clown convention, always remember that what you might find as funny or even interesting may be annoying or offensive to others.

You can always tell those who are new to PowerPoint as their presentations will have ALL the animation schemes, transitions, and plenty of cheesy clipart. In fact, I can recall over 15 years ago, when a peer of mine first introduced me to PowerPoint. The very first thing that he showed me was how to make words appear on the screen with the sound of bombs going off. That was almost cool in 1990! Even then, I wasn't sure what the purpose of such visual effects were.

Avoid statements or images that might be offensive — this includes locker-room humor, offensive images, slang, or swear words. If you wouldn't say it in your place of worship, don't put it in your PowerPoint deck.

Select colors that maintain your audience's attention without straining their eyes. In this series of articles, I'll address proper color schemes and what different color combinations connote.

Never use a font smaller than 16 on any slide. By using bullets you will NEVER need to drop below a size 16 font — even if you have much to say. Simply break down your concepts into smaller and smaller chunks. Save the size 12 font for the speaker's notes.

Rule number SEVEN

First, be prepared to answer your audience's questions real-time. When possible, allow your audience to participate with questions as long as it won't push you over your time limit.

I make sure to let my audience know when there needs to be a hard stop and will budget my time accordingly.

Tip: I always have a hard copy of my speaker's notes.

When I get a question, I make an X on my notes where I left off and am able to pick up where we left off. Remember, if people are required to hold onto their questions until Q&A time, they won't hear a word you are saying until they have their chance to speak up. Moreover, their question may be a fundamental building block of a concept you are trying to make — this will leave them puzzled and frustrated.

Secondly, in what would seem to be the exact opposite of the first — point, answer their questions and be thorough but leave them yearning a tad bit more.

The following analogy will illustrate this concept. In the early days of movies, characters like Flash Gordon, The Lone Ranger or Zorro, always left you hanging on the edge of your seat for the next show.

Achieving this 'cliffhanger' effect at first may seem challenging. Nevertheless, whether it is from slide to slide or in preparation for the next meeting, make sure that you build the anticipation for the next event.

This concept is fairly unique but it dovetails nicely with my earlier concept of keeping PowerPoint slides to brief bullets versus lengthy paragraphs. The accomplished PowerPoint artist will weave his or her story so well that each bulleted concept will induce the audience to anticipate the next bullet, slide, module, or step in the process. I will address this model in future articles in this series.

Truly effective speakers engage their audiences and 'enchant' them with their PowerPoint slides one concept or bullet at a time.

Chris' Seven Golden Rules Summary

Convey Your Message Clearly

In PowerPoint, use bullets nearly exclusively.

If a concept is complex, break it down into smaller concepts and dedicate a slide to each sub-concept or 'chunk'.

For example, you may be talking to an audience about maintaining a healthy dog.

A healthy dog requires:

• Good nutrition
• Proper exercise
• Frequent grooming
• Love and attention

You can further break down the specific details on providing optimal canine nutrition; appropriate exercise; grooming steps and actions; and statistical data of the health benefits to dog owners and their pets.

It occurred to me as I was writing this that I could dedicate nearly a whole book on the dangers of vague, misleading, or simply unclear presentations. I will address this concept in much greater detail in another article in this series.

In the interest of brevity, I'll give some examples of poorly crafted PowerPoint Presentations with notes on how to improve each slide. In all cases these are REAL PowerPoint Presentations — the names, text, and links have been changed to protect the innocent.

Example of Poor PowerPoint Presentations

I found the following PowerPoint presentation on the Internet by doing a simple Google search. What struck me as amusing was the fact that the author of this Presentation touts his PowerPoint presentation as an example of a great PowerPoint and as a recipe for powerful presentations. Surprisingly, he doesn't practice what he advocates. See below.

Example 1

Slide	Problem
	From the beginning slide, the author includes silly transitions. Poor contrast between marbled background and baby-blue font Clipart blends with background

Improved Example

Slide	Remedy
	I took out the transition These colors have contrast causing less blurring The background colors are not dark blue or a bright white causing less eye strain The clipart is muted and pushed to the back so it complements the text.

Example 2

Slide	Problem
	Blue bullets on blue background Font too small for audience to read NO WHERE are there any speaker's notes

Improved Example

Slide	Remedy
	Title appears with NO quotes —- if the speaker has all of his quotes up on the slide, the audience will be reading ahead of him and not following his words.
	With a click of the mouse, the first quote appears, followed by the second, etc.
	The speaker has his notes to prompt him along in his presentation The notes may be included with the printed handouts.

Example 3

Slide	Problem
	This appears as his second slide There are 94 words that appear on this slide Even up close, one cannot read his credentials

Improved Example

Slide	Remedy
	Limited credentials to 3 bullets — the audience couldn't care less how many awards I've won. Recent photo No URLs to distract

Examples of Excellent PowerPoint Presentations

Slide	Positive Attributes
	The template is clean and clear The colors show up well The title is simple and direct
	Title and bullets drop down one at a time and dim from one point to the next No annoying noises or transitions