Improve your presentations!

One of my New Year's resolutions is to stop giving lousy presentations. While I've never gotten terrible feedback on a presentation I've done, I know I've gotten lazy and fallen into the habit of throwing up a few powerpoint slides with text too small and talking over them, just like 99% of all presenters.

I don't like watching those presentations, and I feel worse giving them.

Thankfully, I stumbled onto a blog that is loaded with advice, tools, reviews and dialogue about presentations. It's called Presentation Zen--and, if you haven't read it yet, you should.

The author, Garr Reynolds, offers suggestions for how to use fewer words and more pictures, how to deal with handouts, using graphs, etc. He reviews Steve Jobs' Macworld presentation (thumbs up), and Cingular's Stan Sigman's (thumbs down). At no extra charge, he provides peeks into Japanese culture, like this. (He currently works in Japan.)

Presentation Zen is already quite widely-read, so I may be late to the party. So be it. I resolve to put its lessons to use in all the presentations I give from this day forward.

(Picture: an effective powerpoint slide from Garr Reynolds' website.)

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