Slides are a common feature of modern presentational speaking. For good or for ill, they're here. But programs like PowerPoint are just the most recent form of an ancient practice, visual aids. And I think that term is instructive. It reminds us what these things should do, provide visual support for our messages, aiding us in our attempt to achieve our speech goals. Now to the degree that slides don't help me achieve my purpose, they're not working. If they get my way, they need to get gone. So I think the first thing you need to ask is, do I really need visual aids? Now, if the answer is no, man that's great, you just saved yourself a ton time and potential hassle. Now, if the answer is yes, well think about your options before you jump into presentation slides, right? You could always use a object as a visual aide. So, you've probably had some type of training on software. I know I have. Now, a PowerPoint presentation on how to use a program isn't nearly as good as just letting me get my hands on that program and then following along with you. Okay, so, objects are great for audience interaction. So, think about speakers who work with children a lot. So, like librarians and people who work at children's museums, okay. They thrive on object centered presentations. So, I think they're instructive here. You want to hold an audience of adults, you want to hold their attention, look at the guy who's talking to a group of eight year olds. See what he's doing, okay? That's a tough crowd. So, objects I think are an option that you have to you. Also, chalk boards, easels, white boards, so on and so forth. We've had black boards for over 200 years and they've proven pretty successful. You can direct the audience's attention to key concepts. In many cases, you don't have to worry about going to fast, at least in terms of writing. Because you're writing, more or less, at the same rate that the audience is listening to you or potentially writing down what you have to say. Now, that raises my problem, which is handwriting and spelling. I've got terrible handwriting. And I'm an abysmal speller. So perfect combination. So what I did before we really got into presentation slides is I used to use overheads and transparencies, okay? Just like slides, you could prep an overhead before the speech, but then you could actually interact with it graphically in that moment. So they worked great. In fact, I've got a colleague who speaks to audiences of hundreds, and she only ever uses overheads. So it certainly can be done. But all right, let's say no, slides are going to be the way to go with this, you decided on slides. But then when we start talking about slides, we're actually evoking an older idea. So slides used to be this, right, this thing, this took time and effort to produce, okay. You had to take the picture, there's a little picture in here. You had to send that picture to be developed. You had to advance the slides manually yourself. Or you had to get someone to do it for you. But if you are going to include a slide, it had better be worth it, right? because it cost time and money to make those slides. Now PowerPoints reduce the production costs, but your deliberation cost should stay very high, right. A slide should have to prove itself to justify its place in the presentation. And that's true of all visual aids, whatever you settle on. You need to have a purpose for using because, I would stress, great slides never saved a bad speech. And, in fact, bad slides have actually hurt good speeches. So, you need to be very clear on what the visual is aiding you with. Now, with presentations slides, this question of purpose is particularly important. But I do think there are sort of a wide variety of slide purposes. So on the far side of the spectrum or a pole of the spectrum, I guess, we have slides that are there simply to make an impact, right? That's their job. Usually, these are really sleek-looking slides with great pictures. Many Ted Talk slides are kind of like this. They tell a story or capture an emotion. I've got lots of books written about slides by designers and they've got great advice about slick-looking impact slides. But the thing is, not every situation calls for simply an impact slide. Some slides have different purposes, they've got different work to do. A research presentation at a conference can't just do impact slides, right? You need to dive into the details. If you're explaining how to combine a couple of different budget items into a new payroll system, a picture's not going to do that, right? So on the other side, the other extreme, we've got sort of guiding notes. So there are times when you want to shape how audience members are going to take notes on what you're saying. So when I teach or when I run workshops I know my audience is going to spend way more time with their notes than they ever will with me. So I want those notes to be in really good shape. I want those notes to reflect how I've organized the information, the hierarchy of ideas that I have in mind. And slides can certainly help with this. So I think there can be multiple purposes even within a single slide deck. So if you were presenting on new compliance measures or something. I could see maybe you've got a note driving slide providing key definitions in some categories. Maybe you've got an impact slide or two showing the results of a lack of compliance. Let's say you're talking about the violation of fire code or something. And then maybe you've get us lighter to guiding an audience activity. Where they need to map out how they're going to implement the new compliance measures at their offices. So that's a lot of different purposes in a single slide deck but, regardless, the slide's form follows it's function and I would say that raises the final issue which is, when do you start working on your slides? I think you should wait until that talk is mostly settled, right. So you can see where you actually need them. Now some people might start working on their slides at the very beginning of preparing a talk, and I can see a rationale for that. But I tend to see slides as support documents and I want to figure out the to talk and practice and an outline and then start building my slides. And now as I do that my slides might call for few changes to my outline but for the most part they're going to fellow my overall plan. [MUSIC]
