(an old post from April 2011; saved as draft, left unpublished until now)
I am reading a book on presentations, “Resonate”, by Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design, one of the largest design firms in the world.
Below there’s an excerpt from page 12.
People are interesting
“A great way to stand out is to be real.
Presentations tend to be stripped of all humanness - despite the fact that humans make up the entire audience!
Many corporations condition employees to put meaningless words together, projects them on a slide, and talk about them like an automaton.
The cultural norm is for presenters to hide behind slides as though that’s a form of skilled communication. Look at the slides to the right. These are real statements taken from real presentations. They’re meaningless. Yet these statements were written to attract and lure customers to products or services. It’s the wrong bait.
Presenters think they can hide behind a wall of jargon, but what people are really looking for at a presentation is some kind of human connection.
…
Forming connections is an art, and when it’s practiced well, the results can be astounding.”
What do you think about it?