by Jan Schwartz

PresentationZen by Garr Reynolds

A must have book for anyone who does presentations using either Power Point or Keynote slides.  This is not a book about the rules of presentations, but it is one that encourages the reader to take a natural approach and to think differently about how they connect with their audiences.

All of us, at one time or another, have experienced “death by Power Point.”  This frequently happens because people use slides as documents, or in other words, they present way too much text.  It is well documented that people can read faster than anyone can talk, so they will read what is in front of them rather than listen to the presenter. One of two things then happens:

1. The audience reads the whole thing and wonders why the presenter hasn’t kept up.

2. The presenter sticks in some interesting tid-bit that the audience misses because they
were reading.

In either case the audience is pissed off because they could have just read the handouts at home in their easy chairs.

According to Reynolds, to eliminate these scenarios one needs to be creative and find slides that augment rather than repeat what the presenter has to say.  This book helps you figure out how to do this with great examples using colored slides–all made with either Power Point or Keynote.

To quote Garr in an interview conducted by Guy Kawasaki, “Presentation Zen is indeed an approach not a method. There are many paths and many methods to presenting insanely well today. At its heart Presentation Zen is about restraint, simplicity, and a natural approach to presentations that is appropriate for an age in which design-thinking, storytelling, and “right-brain thinking” are crucial complements to analysis, logic, and argument.”Read more: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/01/ten-questions-w.html#ixzz0Y5uqI6S9

Just reading the forward by Guy Kawasaki was enough to convince me I needed this book in my library.  Garr did the whole book using 15 slides, no audio, no long explanation.  Front to back the book is 229 pages of terrific, easy to read, easy to implement information.  Of course you still need to engage your creative side in designing the slides, know what you are talking about, and practice your presentation until you are super comfortable with it.

Tags: Keynote, online education, Power Point, presentation, presentationzen, slides, tools for teaching online

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