If the goal of your talk is to put your audience to sleep then just hand out sodas laced with Benadryl. If your goal is to engage your audience then please get rid of the PowerPoint deck. Don’t you love it when a speaker stands up in front of the room, PowerPoint projected on the wall behind him while he walks through, word for word, every single dang bullet point. Hey, I can read!
If you are talking to your slides while turning your back your audience, you can be sure they checked out long ago. If you are going to walk through every bullet point then please, just send me the deck in advance and I’ll look it over on my own time.
Prepare your talk or presentation well enough that you don’t need PowerPoint. If you still feel you need to project slides to your audience, then do so sparingly. But only go this route if you’ve prepared well. PowerPoint shouldn’t be your speaker notes.
OK, rant over. 🙂
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