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Change Your Screen Position!
I saw it again today – a conference with almost every presenter walking in front of their projected PowerPoint slides. Not only is this not skillful, it’s not necessary.
There are two solutions:
- Move the screen to the side. Most conference, board and meeting rooms are unfortunately designed very poorly for communications – the screen is plunked right in the center of the room, as if our PowerPoints are the presentation. YOU are the presentation. YOU be in the center. When it’s possible (which is the majority of the time,) move the screen to the left or right side, with the projector and laptop on a table just to your left or right respectively, and you be in the middle.
- When not possible, use Black Slides. (A black slide is simply a plain slide with a black background. More on this important tool later – it has other purposes than just this.) When you use black slides you can move to the center in front of your projector when you want to tell a story, make a point, or otherwise communicate without the PowerPoint shining on you. Then you won’t have to walk through a slide – looks unprofessional and is ineffective.
Although this is not the business tradition, it works. When you go back to being in the center of your presentation, you will multiply your effectiveness.
Bert: A “trick” I use while presenting is to press the letter b on the laptop to blank the screen. This works both when I want attention on what I am saying but also to walk around.
I now have a logitec remote that has a dedicated button to “blank” the screen (it does the same as pressing the button b in “presentation mode”) and this way I press the button on the remote and when I am ready I can press the button again to resume the presentation.
You have a great blog, thanks for sharing your wisdom.
-Avinash.
Web Insights Blog @ http://www.kaushik.net/avinash
Hi Bert,
I use the black slide technique all the time. It is wonderful. My remote doesn’t have a blackout button, but I don’t think that I am missing anything. Placing blank, black, slides in a presentation takes confidence and planning. You have to consider when you will change sides of the room as you create your slides.
Another “trick” that I use is a black background with text placed high on the slide. I can walk in front of the projector with no problem using that setup. It is nice to be able to move from side to side without getting that deer in the headlights feeling.
I enjoy your blog, keep up the good work.
Jeff
http://jeffbailey.typepad.com/soft_talker_blog
I like using black or dark blue background for all of my presentations (Apple’s Steve Jobs has used a nice background for his recent pitches at conferences).
My ideal presentation scenario is a screen on one side for projecting PowerPoint slides at select points in the presentation, and a white board or large pad of paper on a easel for illustrating concepts in writing or drawing. The combination provides some variety for the audience and flexibility for the speaker (me).