How I made my presentations a little better | 43 Folders

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’ll confess that I giggled like a schoolgirl when Garr Reynolds said he was featuring my Google Talk on his site today. Especially since I’ve studied his own slides, posts, and links for months now, and have stolen liberally from what I learned there. Thanks, Garr. I’m totally honored.

I love that Garr gets how the slides in your presentation are about visual story-telling that complements your presence and speaking. They are not a script to be acted-out, or a book to be printed and read aloud, word for word.

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Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 Rule

Although I don’t always follow Guy’s rule, it’s always in the back of my mind. So much so, that, in my opinion, if you’re really struggling with your visuals, it’s worth making “10-20-30” a rule that you break only with mindful and deliberate care. At least until you’re more comfortable with what you want to say, and how you want to say it, hew to Guy’s party line:

It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

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Do a cold open

Metaphorically: clear your throat as little as possible when you start. Try to open with something in the real world — an anecdote, a memory, an image, something that grounds your talk in the “right now” and that skips the whole “Here are the nine things you will learn today…” jibber jabber. You can always do an introduction second, once you’ve set the tone and gotten people’s interest.

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