Effective presentations

Structure a simple story and make your point

Himalayan News Service
Kathmandu
David Ogilvy, Founder of Ogilvy & Mather rightly said, “ Most people use PowerPoint like a drunk uses a lamp post — for support rather than for illumination.” PowerPoint Presentation commonly known as PPT is a powerful tool to communicate ideas with the integrated use of pictures, graphics and animations. With advanced technology the features in PowerPoint software has enhanced considerably. However, even today approximately 90 per cent of presentations are made the way they used to be in the 1990s.
Too much text in the slides, boring fonts, overused templates and confusing graphics. PPT has now become an essential part of every business pitch, classroom exercise, trainings, seminars and so on. However, they are not delivered in the right manner.
Umes Shrestha and Abhishek Maskey are on a mission to help people improve the way they prepare their presentations. The duo conduct workshops that focus on structure of the content, design and the delivery of presentations.
On June 11 they jointly organised a workshop, ‘ Why PPT sucks?’ at The Platform. The six hours long extensive workshop brought together participants from various walks of life.
Entrepreneurs, educationists, journalists, students and professionals from different sectors were in attendance.
Participants were divided into groups and asked to discuss and present factors that make presentations boring. Shrestha then talked about ‘ Death by Power- Point’. He explained that ‘ Death by PowerPoint’ is a legit term which evolved as majority of the presenters used too many bullet points in their PPT which lulled the audience to sleep, constantly check their phones or take several trips to the restroom! Shrestha stressed, “ The content of the presentation must be for the audience. You should first understand who your audience is and then design the content accordingly.” Content must be relevant, personal and useful according to him. He further said, “ Your content should tell a story and give one clear message with the help of examples, videos, activities, questions and such.” Maskey emphasised on how the use of fonts and overall design can make or break your presentations.
He suggested the use of specific fonts and not to stick to default fonts. He demonstrated how an outstanding presentation can be designed without using too much of text in the slide.
The workshop also elucidated on how a powerful vocal delivery can be prepared. Participants were then assigned to prepare a final presentation. Each group prepared and delivered a short presentation on ‘ how to prepare an effective presentation’. Bhuwan Sharma, a participant at the workshop shared, “ I have learnt skills to engage with the audience. The star of the show is the presentation and the stories that we deliver and not us.”

(This article was published on The Himalayan Times-Perspectives on June 19,2016.)