Here’s a quick way to make over a bullet-point slide

It’s called the Assertion-Evidence Format and it was developed by Professor Michael Alley (I’ve mentioned it previously but somehow never devoted a whole post to it).

BTW, if you’ve downloaded and read my Presentation Planning Guide, you’ll see that this slide format dovetails nicely with the planning system I describe in the Guide.

First let’s look at the Assertion part of the format. [Read more]

New scientific research on memory

I love having scientific back-up for the way we do things as presenters. So I subscribe to a number of cognitive science blogs to keep up-to-date. Here are two research studies on memory. The first one backs up what we already know – we’ve got a great memory for visual detail. And the second has a new twist on the impact of novelty on memory.

1. Don’t use cliched photos

Your audience can instantly recognise photos and images that they’ve seen before. And most people, when they see something they’ve seen before will say to themselves “Seen that before, boring”. That’s not the kind of impact you want. [Read more]

5 steps to effective Powerpoint Presentations

Stepcase Lifehack just published a blogpost on tips for more effective PowerPoint presentations. I was surprised to see some outdated and unhelpful advice. Here are my five steps to create an effective PowerPoint presentation. I’ve written about many of these steps before, so I’ve provided links to more detailed posts if you’d like more information.

1. Plan your presentation on paper first.

Keep away from the computer. Garr Reynolds from PresentationZen calls this going analog.

[Read more]

Six lessons in public speaking from Obama

America has elected the greatest political speaker for a generation.

You may think that there’s nothing for you to learn from Barack Obama’s speechmaking skills – that speaking to 200,000 people at Grant Park, Chicago is too far removed from the presentation you might give to your staff, to your management team or to potential clients. Here are six lessons you can learn from Obama’s acceptance speech at Grant Park.

1. Know your audience

It would have been easy for Obama to fall into the trap of talking to the 200,000 people before him in Grant Park. He didn’t. He spoke to Americans in their living rooms, he spoke to those who voted for McCain, he spoke to people watching him across the world – leaders and the poorest of the  poor. He knew who his audience was. [Read more]

Make your pictures concrete too

The more concrete and specific you make your words, the more persuasive you will be to your audience. The same applies to the pictures you show. Recent research backs this up. Students were given short fictional news stories to read:

One story claimed that watching TV was linked to maths ability, based on the fact that both TV viewing and maths activate the temporal love [of the brain]. Crucially students rated these stories to be more scientifically sound when they were accompanied by a brain image, compared with when the equivalent data were presented in a bar chart, or when there was no graphical illustration at all.

[Read more]