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.

http://guykawasaki.com/the_102030_rule/