Rick, you make a great point. Too often presenters use slides as a crutch. They read off the slides and make them the show! Rather, the presenter should be the main focus and the slides the back up act. Your audience should not have to look at a slide more than a few seconds to digest the information. What you are saying should be the focus.

When presenting, you (the presenter) are always the main event. An audience didn’t come to see your slides they came to see you and what your business has to offer. The slides augment a polished image, but it takes you having all together to bring it home!

Too often I see slides used the wrong way – as multi- bulleted speaking points that contain all the information the speaker will deliver. That is not only boring, but it’s “Too much information!”

I use slides 3 ways: to give my audience a peek at the way I have organized ideas and data, ro speed up comprehension through a visual representation of the information I deliver verbally, and to reinforce what has been learned by repetition or seeing the concept applied in real life.

The most confusing slides are the one with the most info such as graphs with multiple data : I’ve seen some with 4 data sets (represented by different colored lines) and a legend no one could read even from the front row. These tend to take more time than the average crowd of “lay people” are likely to give to figuring it out.

Anyway, thanks for letting me have me say on your spiffy new website.