Breaking a Presentation Rule

Breaking a presentation rule Jeanne Trojan @jmtcz

Have you heard of the 10/20/30 rule for slides?

Guy Kawasaki said that presentations should never:

have more than slides

be longer than 20 minutes

contain fonts smaller than

I understand that he’s trying to avoid something like this…

ANNUAL REPORT• ABC had an active year making up almost 50% of the regions total acres burned with 50% of those acres coming from Kansas.• There was 1 type 1, 1 type 2 and 4 type 3 incidents in our zone. We recorded Wildland fires in every month of the year showing that there is no such thing as an established season as we burned all year long due to our geographic area we cover from plains to the mountains.• We started out fairly normal with moisture and temperatures throughout the zone and experienced our normal lightning and human activity. There were fewer wind events during the spring and summer but more during the fall and winter. We normally see a slow down in September and this year we went into a fall season actively burning into October.• We staffed 24 hours to support going incidents 34 days which was less then normal. We had an expanded organization in place for 21 days during our highest fire activity period and used expanded overall for 39 days.• One of the biggest highlights of the year came when a SEAT Base was established in Elkhart, Ks. The first of its kind since ABC had been established. Along with mobilizing 60 Type 1 and 2 engines for structure protection on the Mason incident, PIDC was able to fill 54 of the engines from within zone which assisted in no structures being lost during the incident.• We ended the year going from very mild weather to very cold weather back to above normal temperatures with records for Christmas day of 73 degrees, which has led to less rain and snow for our area for the last 2 months of the year.• ABC is still seeing an increase of incidents ranging from 2% to 7% each of the last 3 years while the budget continues to decrease.• The second notable point was the successful incorporation of the San Luis Valley fire program into ABC, where we provided dispatching service for the Rio Grande N.F., San Luis Valley public Lands Center-BLM and the National Park Service.

But, I think you can follow this rule (and many others) and STILL create bad slides. How?

A problem with this rule is that you might end uptrying to limit the number of slides you use so thatyou don’t exceed the magic number ten.This naturally makes people who are inclined to put alot of text on their slides put even MORE text on eachslide so that they can get all of the information thatthey think is necessary on their slides.The font size of the text on this slide is 32…This is NOT what Guy intended, I think.

Let’s try some guidelines, not rules, for slides.(the difference is that you use your own judgment with a guideline)

A simple goal of all presentations is that youwant your audience to listen to, remember and act on your message.

Slides can help you reach that goal, but…

… don’t let your slides be your presentation!

The role of a slide is to…

attract your audience’s attention

make them curious

and then focus their attention back on you.

Seth Godin is a great example of how this works.

He uses dozens of slides in his presentations…

… and he does it so well that we never notice how many there are.See a great example:http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead.html

If your audience is reading your slide, they aren’t listening to you.

Your audience should spenda few SECONDS looking at your slide before focusing on you again.

If you have detailed information to share…

give them handouts afterwards.

Forget the rules

Be outstanding! @jmtczwww.jmtcz.cz

http://outstandingpresentations.blogspot.com	64
http://belajarpresentasi.blogspot.com	33
http://www.slideshare.net	29
http://lessismoreless.tumblr.com	16
http://seokungfu.com	10
http://ngsystemsbg.blogspot.com	8
http://ecocleanhome.wordpress.com	8
http://paper.li	5
http://www.belajarpresentasi.blogspot.com	4
http://a0.twimg.com	1
http://www.sibiranka.cz	1

Breaking a Presentation Rule

by Jeanne Trojan on Mar 28, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

11 Embeds 179

Statistics

Breaking a Presentation Rule — Presentation Transcript