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]

How to persuade other people to ditch the bullets

You’ve read Presentation Zen and Slideology and you’re convinced about the benefits of using visually-engaging PowerPoint slides when you present. But everyone else in your organization stubbornly sticks to the bullet-point slides. How can you persuade them to change their minds?

The absolute first thing to do, is to be a good role model. When you present, demonstrate the effectiveness of presenting with visual slides. This is the most persuasive action you can take.

However, it’s not always enough. There’s an obvious irony to the fact that when people are surveyed about presentations, their No 1 “hate” is people reading off bullet-point slides. Yet the majority of presenters probably read off bullet-point slides. I’m sure there’s an overlap between the two groups:

[Read more]