Annoying mistakes in presentations

For more articles on the subject Planning, preparation and delivery of presentations

Transferring a presentation is a complex operation, and successfully transferring a presentation requires professionalism and talent (which is why I recommend learning it in an organized presentation course). But know how Do not deliver a presentation Rather easier. In fact, there are several very simple and very common ways to destroy a presentation, and the main ones are:

present in Hebrew a presentation written in English

A presentation written in English and presented in Hebrew creates dissonance, when the audience has to create a synthesis between the verbal message and the written message. This causes those who do not speak good English to disconnect from the screen. It also causes those who do read fast and well in English to disconnect from the speaker. Worse, it also causes speakers to use unnecessary foreign words and jargon. For example, the start-up who talked about "mobilization of applications for Oprizen-Systems of the local server" (yes Danny, that's you!) could have talked about "porting the software to an operating system on the local server".

Presenting a foreign presentation in Hebrew is such a common mistake in high-tech companies that many times programmers in my courses think it's okay to do a simultaneous translation of your presentation every time you present it. "But everyone here does it that way" they say. "And what percentage of the presentations you see bore you to tears?" IM asking. “Oh, about 80%. Well, maybe you're right." they remember And what do you do when you need to transfer this presentation abroad to English speakers? Just translate it.

present to the audience a presentation intended to be sent by email

All the rules on this site regarding how to make an effective presentation are of course only true for presentations you need to present to an audience. When a presentation needs to be sent by email, the rules are very different - for example, you can write in a much smaller font because you see it on a close screen. But the biggest difference is that when there is no presenter, the presentation must include all the relevant information and that means a lot of text, written in standard Hebrew

But since an email presentation has to manage without the presenter, it follows that when trying to deliver it to the audience, the presenter becomes unnecessary. The presentation looks compressed, busy and unreadable, and any attempt to read the text will become long and monotonous.

In short, don't be lazy - if you need to send material by email before the meeting, prepare a text-filled version of the presentation. Even better, write a document in Word and send it

Insert into the presentation all types of animation that PowerPoint offers

Here too, inserting lots of animations of different types can actually be a good idea sometimes. If you are doing a presentation on a "personal topic: motorcycles" in the 6th grade, it can work well. A presentation about "Ortel's cool trip to the north" can also go well with pictures that pop and rotate. For any other purpose it is childish, enthusiastic and very very unprofessional.

The rules are clear - each presentation should have a maximum of two types of animation. They should be from the category of "fine" or "regular", and they must be in a uniform direction - preferably right to left in Hebrew and left to right in English. If you have bilingual transparencies, you can always go from top to bottom. And they have to be at high or very high speed. Personally, I mainly use "wipe" for text because it allows reading while it rises and "fade" for graphics, but it's really a matter of taste.

Put a lot of text on each slide

The rule should be clear - a maximum of 6 lines per slide, and a maximum of 6 words per line. The emphasis here is on M-K-S-Y-M-V-M, not an average, and not a uniform amount. This is the busiest slide in the presentation. And what to do if the material does not enter the mirror? Just split it into two slides. 

here An example and explanation of how a presentation should look With excess text and with a reasonable amount of text.

Read the presentation word for word

There is nothing more boring, unnecessary, annoying, and harmful than reading the slides word for word.

• It's boring because people read much faster than they speak (300-500 words per minute of reading compared to 100-150 per minute of speaking), therefore when someone reads then the content of the presentation moves much more slowly.
• It is unnecessary because very quickly the audience realizes that this is what the presenter is doing and reads the text himself, and then there is actually no longer a need for a presenter.
• It's annoying, because while the audience is reading the third paragraph, the presenter is reading the second. So the audience reads one thing and hears another, it's very difficult to concentrate like that.
• This is harmful, because at this stage the audience feels that the presenter is not only unnecessary but actually sabotages the understanding and enjoyment of the presentation.

Change design and style several times during the presentation

So, unlike all the previous mistakes, this is not a mistake of lazy people but a mistake of too hard workers who decided to design each slide with a different background and structure (or lazy people who mix slides from several presentations together).

The problem here is the confusion of the audience who each time have to re-understand how the presentation is structured, look for the title and the unnecessary points that make it difficult for the audience to concentrate on the message.