Presentations & Powerpoint, Part 1

Inevitably at work I give quite a few training sessions and although I don’t particularly like using powerpoint it can be an effective and easy way to present ideas/results. I’ve always thought my powerpoints lack a really nice design, I’ll come up with a few nice one-off slides but the overall effect usually lacks the visual harmony which you get with a really good presentation. I started looking into this the other night, beginning at Merlin Manns www.43folders.com. He wrote a nice presentation for the guys at Google about Inbox Zero. It’s a very simple presentation but very good (although long) and he starts with a great story about email….

I then found myself on one of those clicking journeys which can either go into a 3 hour rat-hole of discovery/learning or I could record the best bits so here it is. Some good tips and links to use when thinking about presentations.

Seth Godin wrote a really useful ebook called Really Bad Powerpoint. It’s a good place to start.

I then found Garr Reynolds who’s written a phenomenally popular blog and book on the subject both entitled Presentation Zen. He did a talk at Google on the subject which is worth watching (again long, take notes).

I’ll probably get it so will review when I’ve finished it. He also shares some nice visual slides displaying good/bad examples:

This is turning quite long so I’m gonna split it and add some more later.