Why Do Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes?
And How to Ensure They Won’t Happen to Yours
(Andy Goodman & Cause Communications)

Suggestions for Improving your Conference Presentation:

• Know your audience: one of the fastest ways to lose an audience is to begin talking above or below their level of knowledge or outside their job descriptions.
• Regarding the audience: “They’ll probably only remember three things. So pick three things, illustrate them, and repeat them.”
• Audience members want to interact with people in the room. Audience members are potential resources for collaboration.
  
  

The “Fatal Five” problematic factors for presentations:

1. Reading the slides: “Watching someone read PowerPoint slides is a form of torture that should be banned under the Geneva Convention,” survey respondent.
2. Too long with too much information: “Too much of everything... too many slides with too many words, too many points, too much data, too long, too didactic,” survey respondent.
3. Lack of interaction: “Presenters often forget that many in the audience… have life and work experience that is waiting to be shared,” survey respondent.
4.  Lifeless presenters: “Even if I’m interested in the topic, if the speaker is boring, I’m easily distracted by other goings-on in the room…Then I’ totally lost, thinking ‘I need to go shopping!” survey respondent.
5. Room/Technical problems: anticipate them and have a backup plan.
    

Tips for Building your PowerPoint

BACKGROUNDS     

• Keep it simple!
• Dark room should have a dark background with light letters
• Light, bright room should have a light background with dark letters
• Use cooler color as the background; warmer color for the content

FONTS

• Use non-serif fonts such as, Arial or Calibri, they are simple and thicker and project better
• Font size should be at least 28 pt

GRAPHS & IMAGES

• Audiences typically prefers graphs over tables
• Graphs should use complementary colors next to each other for contrast
• Audience typically prefers photos over clip art

ANIMATION & SOUNDS

• Use animation sparingly only to emphasize certain points
• Use sounds sparingly only to emphasize certain points or for video clips 

CONTENT:

• Use the 8x8 rule. More than 8 lines of text with more than 8-10 words/line distracts from presenter and leads to audience fatigue
• Audience should be able to read entire slide in about 8 seconds on a slide otherwise they focus more on the slide and less on the presenter
• No more than one slide every minute