Technology’s great, but…. (Part 2)

I think back to when I took Basic Public Speaking in college. I know it’s hard for Millennials and those even younger to imagine this, but that once was a world without mobile phones – at all – or almost any kind of personal computer (Commodore 64 and the Apple II being leading edge stuff at the time) and certainly no software like Microsoft PowerPoint or Word.

Back then it was just considered common presentation sense that a speaker’s visual aids were there to support his or her presentation and the points being made to the audience. Not, repeat NOT, the other way round.
Somewhere as we sped along the Information Superhighway on our way into the Digital World, this knowledge has been lost.

Case in point; have you ever witnessed a presentation where the speaker and his obligatory PowerPoint presentation just absolutely bombarded you with graphic after graphic after graphic?

Yeah…. Me too. Can you remember any of the main points of that presentation?

Yeah…. Me either. So, at the end of the day, if the audience can't remember the points of the presentation, what did that presenter and all their cutsie image bombardment gain - for you or for them?

Audiences rarely – if ever – had to endure death by imagery before we put the tools to rapidly and, I would purport, excessively build a profuse amount of images into our presentations – Hello; PowerPoint. That technology is great, but like any tool, there’s a right use of it and a wrong use.

The main points I’m trying to make are these:

• Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
• Use graphics only to support, not be your presentation.
• Use your graphics sparingly so they have the impact desired. Too many graphics [or other “whistles and bells,” for that matter] in a presentation and they lose their effect.
• Use only graphics that present the point better than you can explain them. A great example of this would be demonstrating using an item that to do so in person would be prohibitive or unsafe – e.g., using a fire extinguisher in a classroom makes a mess. But a video demonstrating the proper use of the extinguisher to put out a fire does what can’t be done as effectively in the classroom.

The overuse of graphics is not only the signature of someone who doesn’t know any better. Worse, it causes your audience to disengage with your presentation and miss its main points.

Or, to put it "visually:"