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Who’s Afraid of Technology?

Who’s Afraid of Technology?

No, I don’t think it’s a case of them being afraid of newer technologies at all, it more about having some sort of safe guard system in place to make sure that they do not forget what to say next.

PowerPoint ideally provides them with a large screen that has their next point clearly indicated in a very wordy bullet point (more like a full blown sentence) that probably spirals in with a ‘swoosh’ sound effect. As we all know, this is common place and at best it bores the audience, at worse it is condescending. If you were to ban the use of PowerPoint then I think you would see the vast majority of presenters revert to using fully scripted notes as their safety net.

What a lot of presenters know but choose to ignore is that eye contact is the most paramount aspect of making a presentation. If you can’t look someone in the eyes and tell them whatever you need to tell them then there’s probably not a lot of hope that the audience is going to believe you, let alone listen to you.  Let’s not forget that the human eye is attracted by colour (light) and movement. So if the presenter stands motionless behind a lectern while having a very bright light on (PowerPoint) for the entire presentation then I guess it doesn’t take long for the entire audience to be looking at the bright light. Oddly enough, we only listen to someone when we look at them.
So what to do?

Consider using pictures as your prompts. We all know the adage that a picture is worth 1,000 words. It’s true. So if you put a picture up on the screen then you should be able to remember the key points you need to cover that are associated with that picture. Here’s the really good news… if you use a picture then I bet the audience is looking at that picture which means if you need to refer to your notes a little more often then the audience won’t even notice.

“Agh”, I hear you say, “But you told us David that we must have eye contact, how is that going to happen if my audience is looking at a picture?”

An excellent question and one that is addressed in the next point of the newsletter, “Black is Back”.

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