Every day, the average worker sees 1,387,469,000 PowerPoint presentations. Okay, maybe we’re exaggerating, but the number is high enough to send even the most caffeinated among us in to a sleepy haze by the end of the day. Nobody really loves PowerPoint, but is there another way to give a presentation requiring numbers and figures? We think yes.
If you’re ready to get rid of all electronic aid in your presentations, consider just standing up and giving them. Although it will test your public speaking skills not having documents to fall back on, your boss and co-workers will be impressed that you know your material well enough to present without any sort of aid. If you’re not quite ready for such extreme measures, try using an old-fashioned handout. They worked for years before computers were invented, so why not now? Another bonus of using handouts is that your audience can take notes directly on your facts and figures, making note-taking much quicker and simpler.
If you feel that you still need some electronic aid but want to escape from the boxy dimensions of Microsoft PowerPoint, there are a host of websites that offer sleek, sophisticated alternatives. A perennial favorite of ours is Prezi (online at prezi.com), which works more like a huge blackboard than a slideshow. It’s great for visually linking concepts and ideas, and supports a whole host of media styles beyond plain old text and graphs.
Whether you choose to go completely cold turkey or just change your poison, one thing is for certain: walking in to a conference room without your trusty clicker in tow will grab everyone’s attention.
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From the very first poster-board presentation we gave back in middle school, we’ve known that public speaking is tough. Forget trying to make a persuasive argument, it’s hard enough to get through sentences without stuttering or loosing your train of thought. Many of us, when faced with public speaking, tend to focus heavily on content and less on little things like tone of voice and phrasing. Surprisingly though, these little things can add up and may be making your presentations less successful than you’d desire them to be.