★★★★★ 5
Presentations with the audience in mind
Format: Paperback
I bought this hoping it would be a guide to creating Big-3 Consulting-style slides with fancy diagrams and eye-catching graphic design. That is not what this book is. Instead, this book is about how to tell a story with slides, using the framework of a five act drama. With this method forcing you to focus on who your audience is, what they need to know, and how much time you have to tell them (as opposed to trying to shoehorn everything you know about a subject into your pitch) you end up with a presentation that finishes on time for intelligent questions from an engaged audience.
Since buying the book I have given several well-received presentations using precisely that technique. With no words on screen there is no temptation to just read the bullet points, and the audience cannot think ahead of you and must instead listen to what you're saying. You have to know your material to use this method, but when you succeed your audience will be impressed with your knowledge of the subject matter. (If you're working in a group project and want to Blue Falcon a non-contributing teammate, try giving them a few of these slides to speak to.)
The recommended slide format is one picture and one headline per slide, with no bullet points at all. The book suggests creating Notes Pages with an outline of your talk as a handout, since the slides themselves don't stand alone. (And that's a good thing--visual aids are supposed to *augment* the presentation, not *be* the presentation.)
In conclusion, this book might not be for everyone, but it was exactly what I needed.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2018
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