I am attending the Iowa State Bar Association’s eCommerce seminar tomorrow.  The man formerly known as the sixth best law blogger in the world is one of the presenters.  I am looking forward to Brett’s talk as he shares his Vegas Blogworld speech with the audience.

It got me thinking a little bit about how to improve presentations.  Recently I have been to a rash of presentations where the speakers throw up their power point and then talk directly to the screen rather than the audience.  It’s unbelievably annoying.  It’s death by power point.

The best presenters I know are terrific storytellers.  The best speech I have heard over the past year came from Charlie Anderson who delivered a terrific story about his company at a SEMEE event earlier this year.  He was the only presenter that evening who talked without a power point.  His passion was evident.  No slides were necessary.

For great advice on making the right presentation be sure to check out how I made my presentations little better.  This comment about slides from the post is particularly insightful:

Let the slide serve your message, rather than letting you (and your personality and timing) be governed by the slide. 

Thanks to Matthew Homann’s [non]billable hour for the link to the presentation post.