PowerPoint - More Questions

Okay, I'm going to blame this on Karl Kapp, because in response to the LCB Big Question - PowerPoint: What is Appropriate? When and Why? - Karl created a presentation and a blog post that inspired me to revisit a presentation I recently gave and try to improve it using some of his suggestions (and a few others that I've recently read).

The presentation is aimed at folks who manage or are hands-on in the development of eLearning and it's designed to introduce them to eLearning 2.0 concepts and tools. I've given this talk a couple of times in various forms and I got really good reviews, but in going through and trying to improve the slides I found that I had more questions than I had answers. I'm hoping that I can get some help. Please.

1. Do I include an outline?

Guy Kawasaki generally does this thing where he numbers his points from 1-10 because he says that everyone wants to know how much longer the presentation is going to be. I think he says something along the lines of "If I suck, then you want to know how long I'm going to continue to suck."

I always like an outline because I'm often sitting there wondering if the person is going to get to a particular topic, or what the heck they are heading towards. Maybe that's just me.

But, I like to show the rough topics that I'm going to cover and sometimes even give a sense of how much time I'll spend on each. Not unlike what we do at the start of an eLearning course or the start of a class via a Syllabus showing topics over the course of weeks.

But, should I ditch this concept? Should I adopt Guy's approach?

2. Quotes

I personally think that using quotes from other people provides tremendous value during a presentation. I sometimes will include a picture of the person (ex. Martin Luther King), or the book (The World is Flat). I try to strip down the quote to the most important parts or underline key phrases.

But if you look at the suggestions around using images, then it would seem that using quotes are problematic.

I also have always struggled with whether to pause to let people read the quote or read it myself to everyone - which I hate.

So, should I ditch quotes or use them? If so, how?

3. Time & Interaction

I'd love to spend more time on particular topics to have the audience recognize the change themselves, to enlist them to a greater extent in the talk, but since I'm driving to talk about something else, I feel compelled to treat things in a different way.

4. Lists of items

I personally have a hard time using only the verbal channel when someone is going through a list of items and discussing them. It's very helpful to me (just like the outline) to have some visual clue to the size and shape of the list. If you give me a picture and proceed to tell me the five important things on a particular topic, I'd wonder why you didn't try to give me the list. Now sometimes the exact list isn't important and it's more the overall message - then not showing the list is okay. But if the items are something you'd like people to retain, then do you should a list.

5. Handout vs. Slides

Audience members are often upset if your slides are different than your handouts. And heaven forbid if you've added a new slide with new content. I always offer to send it to people via email, but it's still frowned upon.

Several times I've provided more detailed handouts than my slides, but I find that the audience sits reading the handouts during the presentation and I lose interaction.

I've tried - I'll hand out details after, but that frustrates the audience because they aren't sure that the right notes will be in there. (And I have the same concern when I'm in the audience.)

So, what do you do?