Presentation Length?

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Manoel

Everyone who's attended a boring presentation (and yours certainly won't be one ) knows the importance of slide numbering. If you let people know you're boring them but it's already slide 20/23, you will be OK. It's just a nice thing to have on the corner of the slide to inform the audience their pain will be over soon - I find it to be a gentle move by the presenter, and I certainly appreciate a presentation with this.

I hate to disagree with another's suggestion, but this seems to have the opposite effect on me. If a powerpoint is 23 slides...and I'm on slide 8, I'm thinking "how long is this going to go on for?"...and if I'm on slide 20, I'm thinking "yay, almost lunch time". Either way, the numbers tend to make me think more about the time that is passing rather then what is being said. I even get to the point of trying to use it to predict when the speech will be over.

Admittedly, I am terrible with powerpoint presentations. This is mainly due to the assumption many presenters make. A lot seem to think, "I've given you the bullet point and pictures, you should be interested by now". This isn't true. It is still VERY important how you say everything. You can take a perfect powerpoint and do horrible, if you do a poor job presenting it. And you can take a terrible powerpoint and do amazing if you do a great job presenting it.

The trick to Powerpoint presentations(as with all presentations) is in the way you present it. The substance of the speech is only second to the way it is being conveyed. Think of it as a delivery. The perfect gift is horrible if it gets broke in the mail. And if a lousy gift comes with lots of bubble wrap, it could still be awesome.

My points:

1. Try to remove all distractions. (sometimes you have to give them no choice but listen)
2. Don't assume people are interested.
3. A powerpoint is always as good or bad as the speaker.