I am convinced that over reliance on technical aids like Microsoft Power Point, and before that, slide projectors, have ruined the quality of speeches and presentations across the land.

Too many speakers now use their visuals and slides as a crutch instead of as aids. The results are horrific.

Here are some ways you can still give a great speech, despite the use of Power Point:

• Don’t read the slides to the audience, one by one. They can read for themselves and will come to hate you long before you are done.

• If the slide needs more than a short caption to make it self-explanatory, leave it out.

• Use each and every slide (without exception) as a springboard to launch into an anecdote, an interesting fact or a joke.

• Periodically, insert blank slides so that you can speak without a visual. Draw the audience’s attention back to you and your topic.

• Additionally, with a blank slide on the screen, introduce the next slide before you show it. Build anticipation and suspense before the audience can see the slide. Its impact will be greater than if you had simply put it up on the screen and droned on about it.

• Keep numbers and statistics to a minimum. And when they are absolutely necessary, make them interesting. For example, President Eisenhower once illustrated a billion dollars by saying that if they were placed end to end, they would reach to the moon and back.

While it is admittedly true, as the Chinese proverb says, “one picture may be worth a thousand words,” another Chinese saying is also true, “the tongue can paint what the eye cannot see.”

COPYRIGHT(C)2006, Charles Brown. All rights reserved.