I recently sat through a Power Point presentation by an author and squirmed in my seat for about thirty minutes.

First the fonts on the screen were so small I couldn’t read most of the words.  Oh wait! Not to worry, the author READ each slide to me.

The words I could read were in the largest font size and, interestingly enough, in a different font style. Oh well, variety is the spice . . . Among those readable words was one that made me do my double teen blink–”ocassionally.” Okay, it’s one of those frequently misspelling words. I know. But how about spell checker?

As the presentation reached mid-point, we had a small technical glitch. Translation: the computer burped and the show stopped. This happens, right? So instead of being ready with a, “Oh well, let me just tell you the rest.” or “Oh well, a funny thing happened on my way here,” to keep us entertained for a brief period while the Tech Guy (notice I’m  giving him some status with the caps.) shows up, the presenter:

1) Apologized.

2) Tried to fix the problem, leaving the audience to talk among themselves.

3) Choose both of the above. (Correct answer below)

I know many of you are giving presentations at schools, book clubs, and bookstores, so when I stumbled on this article from online Business Week about How to Give a Lousy Presentation I thought I’d share.

I hope the article and the account of my experience will help to make your presentations super successful.

Answer: 3)

About The Author

A native Californian, C. Lee McKenzie has always been a writer, but to eat and make contributions to children's college funds, she's also been a university lecturer and administrator. Lee's written and published non-fiction articles, both in her field of Linguistics and Inter-cultural Communication, and in general readership magazines. For five years Lee wrote, edited, and published a newsletter for U.S. university professors who were managing global classroom issues.  Read more about C. Lee McKenzie.

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