Thursday, April 9, 2015

How to make your presentation effective - 10/20/30 rule




 Have you ever presented yourself in front of an audience ? Then you may have use slides for your talk to make it better.

But did it really improve or destroy your talk?

 Lets find out few facts that may be things you will not like to see if you are in an audience. Because that is the best place to give a verdict about a presentation.

Here are few common errors that i have observed in the presentations which you should avoid. 

1) Too much text in the presentation

How often have we seen the entire wikipedia or at least close to that in slides? Slides are not meant to be read. Believe me if you let the audience read slides you loose attention. You loose some of the audience. Once they are out of your story it is not easy to grab them back.  Maximum 10 words would be ideal. If you can find a single picture which gives the idea at once fantastic use that..

2) Too much slides in the presentation

Do not try to overload the presentation. Usually if have lots of slides then you are at the risk of going out of your time limits.  Be careful not to give lots of ideas in your presentation. Usually i follow a rule of 3. Which means pitch 3 key ideas to the audience and make sure they remember that 3 even after the presentation.

3) Slide formatting.

If you have letters in the slides the text size and the text formatting matters a lot. Text should look great in the presentation screen and not only on your laptop/desktop screen. Use bigger fonts as possible and make sure everyone can see without any effort. Use a proper standard font which looks neat ,well spaced and easy on eyes.

Following video describes a better way to optimize your slides or a good framework. Using 10/20/30 rule.

1) 10 -  slides
2) 20 - minutes
3) 30 - minimum font size.

Just watch this short video and you will understand it better.









Thursday, April 2, 2015

What you should know if you travel in Paris

 I had  a dream to visit Paris , City of love with a breeze of Romance. It is a lovely city to explore lots of things. But if you are a traveller knowing few things i have experience will make your journey much nicer :).


1) If you arrive in Beauvais airport and you need to find a way to go to Paris city center you can get Bus tickets from here. Because Ryan air which is most of the time cheaper will land only in this airport. Most of the people suggest other airports which is near to Paris but if you can spend one extra hour you can land in Beauvais and come to city center by bus. Because it (flight + bus) may be cheaper than some flight options.
2) Paris city metro is little bit complicated but it covers almost all the areas. It may be cheaper to get Paris 10 tickets options which will give you 10 tickets at once at a discounted price.

http://parisbytrain.com/paris-metro-tickets/

3) Get a metro map and correctly identify zones and lanes. Because there are some connecting lanes which can be confusing a bit. And also make sure you are not going through an exit when changing lanes or metros, Because once you do you ticket become void and have to use another ticket. Some routes combine rail and metro and may be cumbersome to find them. So to make things easier i opted only to use metro even though the ticket is valid for both to make my journeys hassle free.

3) You should visit paris by night which is more beautiful than the day time. I am posting few pics below and you can decide :)

4) Louvre is an amazing place to visit. But it takes time to explore since it is massive. Plan to spend at least  5 to 6 hours of the day there. Make sure you check the timetable as they closes the Museum on time
http://www.louvre.fr/en/hours-admission