Tip 25: Keep your presentation simple
Making your presentation over-complicated is a very easy trap to fall into. Many speakers make this mistake, in an attempt to appear intelligent and knowledgeable.
In reality, giving a presentation is an entirely different genre from writing a technical report. If you are writing a report or article, you have the freedom to go into details, and the reader is at liberty to skim over sections which are not relevant, and to read the article in stages over several sittings, going over difficult areas again and again and again until they gain a satisfactory understanding.
This is not possible with a live oral presentation – your audience is not at liberty to control the flow of the interaction and so this form of communication is not suited to conveying a mass of complicated information.
You do yourself and your audience a disservice by using the wrong tool for the job.
You should keep your presentation simple: have simple goals, clear messages, and moderation in length, while avoiding simplification and dumbing-down. Achieving this balance can be difficult, but it will be appreciated by your audience. It does take more forethought and planning on your part because you have to think very hard about what to include and what can be left out or conveyed better through other means.
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