Good Speaker, Bad PowerPoint
August 7th, 2007I went to a meeting today attended by about 30 people. It is a networking group I’ve been involved with for years and know the presenter for as many years. He’s an author and very good speaker. I always enjoy his presentations. He has an incredible amount of energy, enthusiasm, and always very knowledgeable of his speaking topic. He also has a great sense of humor that makes his presentations very entertaining.
But his PowerPoint today seemed to be 90% bullet points. He could have just as well handed out (after the meeting), a MS word document with an outline of his speech. He is a good enough speaker to probably get away with out speaker support slides. BUT, if he took the time, or had the time to develop his visuals to support his information rather than just be a duplicate of what he was saying, he could become an exceptional speaker.
He didn’t read his slides. He’s way beyond that in his presentation delivery skills. He basically paraphrased the bulleted text on each slide. Better visuals would help him keep on track and leave more time for his great improvising, personal stories, and humor. His slides would have been easy to enhance and could have made a good presentation into a great presentation.