#boring presentations

[untypicable]

PowerPoint Hell: The Ninth Circle of Workplace Torture

If Dante were alive today, he wouldn’t need to invent elaborate punishments involving ice, fire, and rivers of souls—he’d simply describe the corporate meeting room, a place where time slows to a crawl and PowerPoint slides stretch endlessly into eternity. Here, in the ninth circle of workplace suffering, the air is thick with dread and passive aggression, the projector hums ominously, and all…

PowerPoint Hell: The Ninth Circle of Workplace Torture

[doodlesnclass]

Sat through “Career Presentation Day” today. Pen died= I died.

[standandcommand-blog]

I always start my training sessions by telling about the time I managed to put an audience member to sleep. Seriously. I saw it coming. Just as he started to drift off, I cried out in my thoughts, "Noooo!" But it happened. His head tipped back and he snored for the rest of my presentation - about 45 minutes. There were only a dozen people in the room so needless to say he stole the show. Not that it was much of a show. I had a deck of 80 slides and most of these were covered with hard to read text in an endless series of bullet points. Boring! I decided at that point to use my storytelling skills in presentations (and to talk louder). It's a good story to open the training sessions. It breaks the ice and makes everyone feel comfortable because they know I've screwed up. In fact, I've screwed up plenty so I have an arsenal of "Colleen's presentations gone bad" stories. I think stories like these are what makes for a great training session and a great business presentation. Become a collector of stories, particularly the ones that humble you and get your audience laughing at you. It sure beats watching them fall asleep.