As medical students we have to give a lot of presentations. Yet for some reason there is rarely any formal teaching on presentation skills. Occasionally there are classes on “how to use powerpoint” but these usually focus on the technical side of making a slideshow rather than actual presentation skills.
So, the only way to learn is by example. We get hundreds of lectures from doctors and fellow students, but all too often the slides end up looking like this:
With presentations like these the presenter will most likely read the text directly from the slides. Every person listening will do the same thing: read the slide then stop paying attention.
This is why we’re introducing Presentation Skillz – Thugstyle….
We’ve taken the example above and Thugged it out, it should look more like this:
The following are some guiding principles!
Keep it simple – cut out anything that is irrelevant. If you follow this principle alone, your presentations will be good.
Select a solid tone background – nobody likes the default Microsoft powerpoint templates. You know what we’re talking about, the background blue sky or the crazy futuristic ones. These can’t have been changed since 1994. We recommend a simple black background
Use a massive font – if you’re using anything under size 30, you got too much text.
Maximum 5 words per line – the reason for this is 2-fold. Firstly, it forces you to actually learn your presentation rather than read slides and it forces the audience to listen because otherwise they won’t get the necessary information.
Use high quality images – NO clipart. Check out www.flickr.com for free pictures.
You are the presenter – The powerpoint slides are only visual aides, YOU are the presenter. The slides should serve as a rough guide which means you have to know your content well. If you want you can use some note cards.
Speak to the audience – all too often it’s more comfortable to look at the screen while presenting. NEVER do this again.
Practice – don’t mistake practice with weakness. Delivering a good presentation always takes practice.
Some of these may seem obvious, but all too often you get presentations with the stereotypical backgrounds and 100 words on the slide.
If you want further information check out Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds – he’s a pimp!
Or watch an example presentation here– Mr. Kawasaki demonstrates true ThugStyle!
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