The PowerPoint rule you should toss in the trash

Long before PowerPoint (or Keynote, or Prezi or…), telling your story, making your pitch, or teaching a class involved the art and skill of figuring out the flow and delivery of your message…orally.

Following rules for PowerPoint in WebinarsAnd really connecting with your audience included techniques like working on your pace, pauses, spaced repetition, linkages and “call backs” (and other memory-enhancing devices), and on and on.

IF there’s a time to speed up, a time to slow down, a time to pause before or after a key point to improve attention and impact when you’re speaking…

…THEN, why not do the same with what you’re showing?

The idea that you should “change slides every minute” is arbitrary.

The idea that “a 30 minute presentation should have <this many> slides” is equally so.

For your audience, attending your webinar or webcast or virtual class is a psycho-social shift. Even if you have your beautiful self on camera the audience will pay greater attention to your slides than when you’re mano-a-mano.

Improve attention and impact. Think “pace and pause” with your slides. Avoid dumb rules.

P.S. Want to see this in action? Consider attending this or even participating in this.

2 thoughts on “The PowerPoint rule you should toss in the trash

  1. Jennifer

    @Roger

    Great post! Totally agree! I hate the question: ‘How many slides?’ as a good slide show may have lots and lots of slides or hardly any.

    And if you’re using build slides, then one appears like one slide to your audience may actually be 5 slides.

    It also depends on your text to slide ratio – and if you have to give your participants a handout of your slide because it’s that text dense, then maybe it shouldn’t have been a slide show in the first place. Who wants to read a 20 page handout when it could just be a 2 page handout??

    1. TheVP

      Jennifer, I think I’m going to ask you to marry me! LOL!

      You nailed it.

      Thanks for hanging out here virtually with us.

      -R

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