Only here, at the end of our process, handouts complete, outline complete, am I ready to introduce PowerPoint Keynote to our system. The presentation is all but locked at this point. Keynote has very little room to mess things up.

But we need to get it out there, out into the open, intervention-style, that 90% of the time we use bullets, we use them to help us remember our presentation. 90% of the time you throw up a slide like this:

It’s because it helps you keep your presentation on track.

But presentation is very nearly a zero-sum game: anything that makes your experience easier as a presenter makes the experience more difficult for your audience. Any weight you shoulder, whether you’re memorizing or note-carding your talking points, whether you’re doing more with your handouts than printing out slides six-to-a-page, makes your audience’s experience more rewarding.

So I move carefully, evaluating each slide, wondering inwardly if slide x benefits me or my audience ’cause very rarely is it both.

Slides are only here, in this specific presentation, because there are things I have to show. I bust these clichés up, many times, by deploying careful visuals, some of which I have to recreate. I have to show them math basketball, fake or legit, miscellaneous questions, the pentagon problem. I have to show them these things.

I have to show them Kelly.

(more…)