Simple = Effective Presentations

Many years ago I took a computer programming course that was crammed into a week. During the last day of the course I worked with a team to solve a business problem. You failed if your solution required the use of a computer. The lesson was that technology is not always the answer.

Seth Godwin wrote “Really Bad PowerPoint and How To Avoid It” as a 10 page pdf ebook in 2001. Several million presentations later this is still a good read. He states that you don’t need all of those wizards built into PowerPoint and that they just hurt your efforts to communicate. Instead, “make slides that reinforce your works, not repeat them. Create slides that demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you’re saying is true not just accurate.” He recommends no more that six words per slide. Yes, six words.

And why only 10 pages?  If he “hadn’t spent so much time on it, it would be longer.” Same for your presentation: simple=effective.