Don’t Spoil A Good Thing!
A presentation by a subject matter expert was spoiled yesterday by some shortcomings that could have been avoided. The following are some of the issues that we identified throughout the presentation:
- With reference to a number of slides, the speaker asked, “Can everybody read that?” This was avoidable and the speaker should have checked the legibility of the text for the size of room in which the presentation was to be given. If it’s necessary to show tables of text containing a lot of information, it’s better to provide handouts for the delegates’ personal reference.
- All of the six event sponsors’ logos were shown at the bottom of every slide, creating additional crowding of the space that would otherwise have been useful to allow the eye to scan the main body of the slides without distraction. The sponsors may have insisted on their logos being displayed prominently but other means of display, such as a banner or a handout for the delegates, would have avoided crowding of the slides.
- The speaker came across as having spoken every thought in his mind about his subject, rather than restricting his delivery to the most important and relevant points. This caused accelerated speaking because he was keen to stick to the allocated time slot (always an essential thing to do) and his words seemed to roll into one another.
- The text contained numerous mistakes, such as a consistent lack of apostrophes for possessive references. There were also spelling mistakes. The importance of attention to detail in editing can’t be over-stated.
- Slides were skipped over and then revisited later in the presentation, indicating either a momentary change of presentation plan or a failure to design the sequencing beforehand. A presentation plan, that is adhered to throughout, is always necessary.
- Some images were blurred because they were expanded to too large a size for their resolution. This could have been checked beforehand. If an image doesn’t look sharp on the screen at the scale required for the size of room, then find a higher-resolution version of the image, use a different image or find a way of conveying the message without an image. Images are great but they must suit both the context of the message and the required display size.
- Slide headings were split between two lines when there was plenty of room to fit all of the text into one line. Slide headings should always be concise, relevant and ‘easy on the eye’
- Lists of bullet points appeared in full, so the audience was reading the list, and probably being annoyed by the grammatical and spelling mistakes, rather than engaging with the speaker. A point-by-point build-up of bulleted items would have been much better.
- With reference to one particular slide, the speaker said, “I’m not going to read this out because I doubt you can read it anyway.” The purpose of this statement wasn’t obvious and a slide that can’t be read on the screen shouldn’t be on the screen in the first place. Handouts are far more effective and they show that ease of reference for the audience has been considered in the presentation planning.
We overheard the speaker’s authority on his subject being questioned by some delegates during a coffee break. This was unfortunate because we believe the speaker was passionate about his subject and knew his material, but there was a mismatch between his experience of the subject matter and the credibility of his presentation delivery, which is never a good sign!