Death by Powerpoint. If you’re not familiar with the disease, you know some of the contributing factors:
1) reading from slides
2) multiple ideas per slide
3) all text

I could go on (clip art). Suffer through enough of these, and you understand why some audience members leave laptops open (not really, stop that). At any rate, there are short and long term hits to bad presentations. Short term, you fail to persuade, seemingly the point of being there. Long term, you miss an opportunity to demonstrate clear thinking – a unique trait in any industry.

Since bad presenting is pervasive, doing it well may be the easiest way to separate you or your organization from the pack. To help, here are 2 sources of inspiration on the “how” of effective presentations.

1) slide:ology – from Duarte Design, the group that helped Al Gore with his “An Inconvenient Truth” show.
2) Presentation Zen – from Garr Reynolds, an American marketing professor teaching in Japan. Big on eliminating clutter and taking into account how people actually process info. Download the presentation tips – its all there.