Ruminations on Russia

As a crap presenter, and as the recipient of crap presentations, I am fascinated by the advice given to create more focused presentations. Whilst Roger's comments are specifically tailored to pitching VC's the basic theory still applies. If you have a 1 hour meeting and 30 slides then at best that's 2 minutes a slide. Do a rehearsal and work out what 2 minutes a slide feels like. Imagine yourself to be on the receiving end of a new slide every 2 minutes. Then factor in questions. Now reduce the number of slides by at least 60%.

And just because you have less slides does not mean that you should cram more onto the slide. I hate investment banking slides which have so much info crammed in to them that I spend 3 minutes trying to determine what's important and then I need to understand why it's important and on the third slide I stare at trying to get the information to leap off the page my concentration slips. I know that I should be professional enough to work through that but I am just human. It's not dissimilar to running meetings in Russian. I have to concentrate so hard that the moment I am not giving it 100% I am getting nothing.

I had a boss who had learnt his presentation skills in a consultancy; i.e. very busy with each slide containing 5 slides worth of information. But they were rescued by a strip line which stated the take away from the slide.

If you don't believe me try reading;

Beyond Bullets and this post from Brad Feld the comments to which are a complete link fest.

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