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During my MBA, I have evolved my thinking about presentations. I have grown to hate the bullet, text heavy design that we have been programed to do since grade school. I strongly believe that style does little to convey much of a message as the audience is too busy reading rather than connecting with the speaker. So I am becoming a proponent of the visual presentation where the speaker memorizes his key points rather than reads them off a slide, but I think there may be a challenge depending on the audience.

When presenting to analytical types like engineers and professors, they like to see the data even if it means not listening attentively at the speaker. One part of me says force them to listen (they will benefit from it), but the other recognizes if you only have one shot and you fail to deliver what the audience expects (or demands) you may lose them from the start. Not sure how to reconcile this situation. But I want to highlight another great presentation on the art of presentations by Nancy Duarte. I like Nancy because she ignores the common mantra of destroy powerpoint and advocates embracing the platform to deliver truly memorable presentations (don't shoot the messenger, shoot the message (and message creator)).

Nancy really makes a great point that I have embraced (but not necessarily articulated very well) that powerpoint is a powerful tool that has multiple uses. Obviously we can use it to make wonderful visual presentations. The other use is as a document creator. Fill each slide with text, graphs, images, bullets. The key is to recognize how each are to be used: visual presentations to engage audience and documents for your audience to read on their own.