Exit Slides
Last week I presented at the East Windsor Rotary club. What a great group of people!! I enjoyed talking with this club and hope to be invited back again. I hope that the club also learned about my topic - the History of South Africa.
I created the PowerPoint slideshow to be presented from start to finish. We normally start the slideshow at the beginning and keep going until it the last slide is done. One problem with this approach is that the slide show is not flexible. We can only shorten the presentation to a point, if for example, the prior speakers go way over time and we have to start 20 minutes late in a 40 minute presentation.
It is a common situation to have the presentation time cut, to keep the program on schedule. For example, prior speakers often do not pay attention to the time at all, and you are expect to adjust accordingly. Fortunately, as experienced speakers, we are all aware of this common occurrence and are prepared for it.
My situation last week brought me to realize the need and value of building "Exit Slides" along the way, in the presentation. For example, if a slideshow has 50 slides, then I am goping to experiment with creating "Exit Slides" after every 10 slides. In this case, if I see that time is running out faster than we are progressing through the slide show, then I can stop on an "Exit Slide", and gracefully move into my presentation conclusion.
The audience has not seen the presentation before and we are serving the audience better by being ready to exit at multiple points during the PowerPoint slides, rather than being forced to show all the slides through to the end. We are not serving the audience by either rushing through the slides, or by sticking to the presentation timing and then going way over the time allotted for our speech.
So, the lesson from this blog posting is : "Think about how you can create exit points in your slideshows, so that you have graceful options to shorten your presentation if desired".
Go forth, and keep safe out there on the platforms. Time challenged speakers are already scheduled to speak before your next presentation...
I created the PowerPoint slideshow to be presented from start to finish. We normally start the slideshow at the beginning and keep going until it the last slide is done. One problem with this approach is that the slide show is not flexible. We can only shorten the presentation to a point, if for example, the prior speakers go way over time and we have to start 20 minutes late in a 40 minute presentation.
It is a common situation to have the presentation time cut, to keep the program on schedule. For example, prior speakers often do not pay attention to the time at all, and you are expect to adjust accordingly. Fortunately, as experienced speakers, we are all aware of this common occurrence and are prepared for it.
My situation last week brought me to realize the need and value of building "Exit Slides" along the way, in the presentation. For example, if a slideshow has 50 slides, then I am goping to experiment with creating "Exit Slides" after every 10 slides. In this case, if I see that time is running out faster than we are progressing through the slide show, then I can stop on an "Exit Slide", and gracefully move into my presentation conclusion.
The audience has not seen the presentation before and we are serving the audience better by being ready to exit at multiple points during the PowerPoint slides, rather than being forced to show all the slides through to the end. We are not serving the audience by either rushing through the slides, or by sticking to the presentation timing and then going way over the time allotted for our speech.
So, the lesson from this blog posting is : "Think about how you can create exit points in your slideshows, so that you have graceful options to shorten your presentation if desired".
Go forth, and keep safe out there on the platforms. Time challenged speakers are already scheduled to speak before your next presentation...
Labels: PowerPoint Tips
posted by Wayne Botha @ 7:24 PM
2 Comments:
At February 19, 2009 4:49 PM ,
PowerPres said...
Fantastic topic. It is all too common to find one's self in a position where cutting a presentation short is necessary.
Another option would be to limit the amount of infomation on each slide.
If you were to cover topics A, B, C and D in a presentation, simply shorten the amount of time spent on each of the four topics. You can achieve this by keeping the slides simple with little written information.
By doing so, you won't deprive the audience of any one topic. You are simply shortening your speech.
Also by keeping the information in your head instead of on the slides, you are free to control the timing of your delivery.
Less is More.
At February 22, 2009 2:08 PM ,
Wayne Botha said...
Yes - this is a great suggestion. I find that if I only keep the information in my head, I tend to forget everything relevant to the slide if I have time for a longer presentation. It happens that I forget the information when I make the same presentation once a month or once every other month.
I find that is is useful to keep the information in the "Notes" section of the slides. Then, I print out the notes and can either keep them with me if I have a lectern, or else review the notes during final rehearsals. Then I don't forget the points relevant to the slide.
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