For my previous slide make-over, I gave a slide deck presented by the Coast Guard at a Web 2.0 workshop. This facelift targets a deck presented by the EPA at the same workshop. The issues were different this time and unfortunately, the “Greenversations At A Glance” slide deck was typical of what I see on a regular basis. Not only are the slides text-heavy, but they’re also very content-rich. Too rich, in my opinion.
As you can see, there’s a lot to read. The audience can’t possibly be expected to read all this and absorb what the speaker is trying to share. The story was important and of great value. It’s just too bad the slides hurt her efforts.
Below is my effort at redesigning the deck.
As you can see, the deck shrank in half from 22 slides to 11. Much of the content on the slides were details that didn’t need to be on slides. Even coming up with visual metaphors for each slide or each chunk of content on the slides would have been too much. The presentation is what she was up in front saying to us in the audience, not her slides. I’ll address each of the new slides and what I did and why I did it. As always, please feel free to add your comments below.
- Title Slide - I decided to follow a similar path on the title slide that I took with the Coast Guard make-over. The difference here is the title and subtitle are moved up to take advantage of extra space and take advantage of the rule of thirds. For this deck, I used Keynote’s “Showroom” template. I did tweak it a little bit, though, to make it more appropriate for the subject material and to try to avoid the “I’ve seen that before” that you get when using built-in templates. The green line ties in with the environmental theme of the Greenversations blog. I added a reflection to give it a little more thickness without overdoing it.
- Agenda Slide - For this and subsequent slides, I carried on the line from the title slide. The agenda items, rather than being bullets in a list, were instead represented by conversation bubbles. This too was an attempt to reinforce the theme of the blog. The agenda items are brought in one at a time, allowing for commentary and for the focus of the audience to be squarely on what the presenter is addressing at the moment.
- Slide 3 - In this slide, you can see an alternative approach to the standard and unimaginative slide title. Instead of having slide-specific titles, I brought the conversation bubbles from the agenda slide to the bottom of the slide and adjusted the opacity to keep the focus on the content and not the bubbles. For the “Why?” slide, I decided to focus on her message of putting “a human face on the big blank box (government).”
- Slide 4 - This slide focuses on the organizational structure that they have for managing their blog. Though crude and simple, this reinforces the message better than a few slides of text.
- Slide 5 - When it comes to the important message of encouraging bloggers to reply to comments on their posts, a simple, straight-forward photograph accomplishes this. A little bit of text in a caption reinforces this.
- Song of the Coqui - Easily my favorite slide in this deck, this replaces slide 10 in the original deck. Using a photograph that goes to the edges and shows the face of the frog has far more impact than the embedded photograph looking down on the frog’s back. The commentary was distilled down to concise points that minimizes reading. Again, the details will be in what the speaker’s saying.
- Weekly Features Slide - This slide needs more work. However, it’s a good start at getting away from the text-heavy original. Spacial representations work well for time-based information.
- Flow of the River - This slide’s design is similar to the Coqui slide for visual consistency. Though the image isn’t the one she talked about in her presentation (the original was way too small), that’s not as important as having a visual to reinforce what she is talking about.
- Policy & Legal Slide - Here, I’m going for humor. I’m not going for the laughs (or chuckles) at the beginning of the presentation, but rather at about the 10 minute mark when the brain starts struggling with paying attention to the current presentation. This little shift in gears grabs the audience’s attention anew, buying the speaker more time to get through the talk. Now, humor isn’t something that should be used haphazardly. If the joke isn’t relevant, then you can easily lose your audience.
- Comment Policy Slide - This is one of those slides where I’m using a bulleted list without bullets. A list works for what she’s trying to get across, but if you can, avoid using bullets themselves. This keeps the slides clean and you avoid those lethal bullets.
- Last slide - Here, the audience gets to see the blog with the contents of two slides condensed to one slide and three “bullets.”
All photographs are credited in the slide notes. For the subject matter of the presentation:
As I mentioned earlier, please feel free to comment on my slide make-over and/or suggest alternative approaches in the comments area below.
PowerPoint’s 
Watching 
The second incident was a demo of Midi Mobilizer by Line 6 and Planet Waves and was presented by Marcus Ryle. During his presentation, the application failed to produce the appropriate sounds for the selected amplifiers.
We’ve all heard it before. “They want to hear what you have to say.” So often, little effort is put into preparing a presentation because it’s just assumed that because the audience is there, they’ll be hanging on every last word you have to say. In many instances, that’s a dangerous assumption to make. If you’re speaking at a seminar or conference where the attendees paid to be there, then it’s probably a safe assumption that the audience does care about what you have to say. However, if it’s a meeting at your place of employment, be it a committee meeting or a status meeting, chances are, it’s safe to assume the attendees would rather be somewhere else.
We’ve seen these people. They’re all over the place. In some organizations, it’s institutionalized. What I’m concerned about is the laser pointer. Not everyone uses them, but I don’t see anyone standing up and pleading for these people with frickin’ lasers in their hands to stop. It seems, at least in my stomping grounds, that it’s just accepted that laser pointers, being presentation tools are wholly appropriate. I’ve had one offered to me after making quite clear (politely) that I do not use them because I don’t use “Reading Rainbow” slides.
While trying to listen to the presenter (1), you’re looking at the presenter’s (2) hand with the laser pointer to gain an initial visual reference for the location of the little red dot (3) as they address the content on the slide (4). Occastionally, the audience will go back to the hand (2), especially in cases when the little red dot (3) is moving around a lot. Asking anyone to be able to follow along and remember the message is just asking too much.
This last week, I got to give a presentation in the office. Time to get the conference room set up was short, but the slides were ready and I had practiced ahead of time. It was one of those days where there were back-to-back meetings with other responsibilities keeping me running around.
“Get your presentation, complete with slides done this afternoon. You need to present tomorrow morning.”
We’ve all seen slides like this. It’s your standard title and bullet list slide. The title is “Agenda” and below it is a detailed list of each topic that will be discussed. Oh, don’t forget the Q&A at the end.
By day, I’m a manager supporting a major web site. By night, I’m an amateur photographer who also treats presentation delivery and presentation slide design as serious subjects of study. [...]
