Presentations: We´ve all sat through them, wondering why we´re there; or
we´ve given them, wondering whether the audience cares. This is a book
about how to make presentations effective and therefore more interesting to
the audience members.
Years ago, I was at a conference where one of the most distinguished
cognitive scientists in the world, an expert in how the mind processes
information, was wandering though a PowerPoint® presentation and losing
the audience in the process. I thought about the number of presentations I
had heard where the presenters did not accommodate their audience
members´ short attention spans, difficulty reading small type, need for
organization, and other strengths and weaknesses. As a scientist, I started
thinking about how to use well-known laboratory findings to improve presentations.
And then I wrote a book.
My book Clear and to the Point addressed all aspects of presentations
and discussed eight ``rules´´ about how our minds work: the same eight
rules discussed in this guide. In that book, I assumed that the reader
was starting from scratch and would read the book cover to cover.
Although generally well received, it soon became clear to me that there
is still a need for another, more focused book—for at least two reasons:
First, most people interested in PowerPoint® presentations have already
made at least one presentation; they are not PowerPoint® innocents.
Second, people who want a book on presentations want one that they
can use easily, not one they can take to an evening chair and read cover
to cover.