In this newsletter:
📝 Post: Make Your Presentation Better (Starting With Your Slides)
🗞️ In Case You Missed It: Tech Headlines
😎 Pick of the Week: Cool Collections
📦 Featured Product: Packing Cubes
📝 Make Your Presentation Better (Starting With Your Slides)
Since sharing my main tip on presentation slides, I figured I would share a few more in case you had more questions than answers. Slide development and presenting can be argued to be an art form of sorts in a way. Technically, there’s an entire degree and career path devoted to it - Instructional Design. My degrees aren’t in this exact area, but a similar one, and educators by nature can be argued to be instructional designers themselves, too.
In my years of developing presentations, textually and visually, I’ve probably made more mistakes than not. I’ve also talked a lot about the 80/20 rule before and would argue that in many cases, presentations are probably never ‘complete’ as we would think them to be. Any great presenter is always updating their slides and information and catering it towards their next audience as best they can.
Since I can’t help with your exact content, what I can help with is how the content is being shared visually through your presentation slides. There are three areas to discuss, and many of these tips come from a presentation I give on making presentations, and you’re getting the less than 5-minute newsletter version.
First, some basic rules. These include things that you do and shouldn’t do. As in: don’t read the slides verbatim to your audience (they can read); be the Subject Matter Expert (SME) and provide context, experience, and background; and use the 3-part structure - Beginning (tell them what you’re going to tell them), Middle (tell them), and End (tell them what you told them).
Second, some technical rules. These include more visual things to do and not to do to make your slides easy to follow. For example: keep a consistent theme of layout and organization, utilize whitespace, use a minimal number of colors (typically 3-4), and use a larger font size (less text on slides with more total slides is OK, as mentioned last week). I’m also a fan of limiting images and charts to one per slide. Yes, 1 image or chart per slide, with no (or minimal) text, and make the image or chart as large as you can as to make it easily seen.
Third, some interpersonal rules. These include making sure you are heard and understood not only in what you are saying, but how you are saying it. Make eye contact as appropriate, speaking to people, not at them. Be professional in your humor, tone, and language. Be comfortable with potential awkward silences, waiting for those in the audience to answer any question you may have. And lastly, be sure to repeat any question to clarify what was asked and ensure everyone heard.
Now that we know a bit of the what to do, now let’s see how we can build this presentation. Remember, keep it simple, keep it minimal, and don’t be afraid to provide more slides than you think you need. While the most popular tool to design presentations is PowerPoint, don’t think that’s all you're stuck with. I will say - I use PowerPoint almost exclusively. There’s an online version you can use, too, if you don’t have the full desktop program. If you want to up your PowerPoint game, check out the resources and tips offered by BrightCarbon. If you are on a Mac, Apple’s alternative to PowerPoint is Keynote. It’s a free download and comes with templates, just as PowerPoint does.
For those of you who prefer something else, or would at least like to find a different template, there are tons of resources available in this space, shared below.
What other tools do you use to build your presentations?
🗞️ ICYMI: Tech Headlines
Not to be left out of the streaming wars over the last few weeks, Fubo Sports annouces a Skinny Sports Service to Launch This Week at $55.99 per month, almost half of their normal monthly pricing.
OpenAI released their next update to ChatGPT, gpt-realtime and Realtime API. These updates now allow for production voice agents - meaning its now possible to have an AI operator answer your calls and respond based on context, uploaded documents, and the normal ChatGPT data. Keep in mind, this feature is an extra costs for all subscribers based on minutes used.
The popular and collaborative work space and project/task management tool - Notion - now has an offline mode! And if that isn’t a big deal for you, that’s okay. But I (along with 400,000 others on Reddit) am excited for this update that was promised around 4 years ago.
😎 POTW: Cool Collections
People and businesses alike collect things intentionally or unintentionally over the years. Some collections are worthless, while some are worth millions. Some of those collections become infamous, and some remain private. Luckily, there’s a few that have made the rounds and are now available to us.
📦 Featured Product
If you travel and wanting to save space, or starting your own collection, consider the BAGAIL Ultralight Compression Packing Cubes. You can choose a set of 4 or 6, along with your color of choice. There are other brands and alternatives that may come with mesh wall, but I wouldn’t suggest them for two reasons. First, they can’t compress as much, and if you wanted to use them to put dirty clothes in, the smell or dirt would come through to the rest of your bag.
