Introduction
In the previous section, we talked a lot about audience understanding, which is absolutely critical to the success of your presentation, but it is equally important that you understand your subject matter before you start speaking.
Content is central to any presentation. Your content must be accurate, factual, and well-organized before you start adding any kinds of bells and whistles along with it. In an ideal world, you would have a thorough knowledge of your subject matter before you start to present, but we all know that doesn't happen every time. Our clients and supervisors give us assignments just outside our comfort zones, or we change jobs and have to learn new product lines, or a new issue comes up that we have to quickly learn, digest, and be able to explain to someone else.
With all the advances in presentation technology (like PowerPoints and multimedia) it's pretty easy to get distracted from the meat of the presentation. Sometimes people spend hours working with their animated transitions--when what really matters is the message. It's pretty easy to understand how this happens. Research is hard if you're working on a new subject. And if it's a familiar subject, you feel like you know it so well you don't even have to prepare. And jazzy presentation software is sometimes just fun to play with.
However, keep in mind the great and famous presenters who shaped world history: Moses; Jesus; Gandhi; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Abraham Lincoln. What stands out about these speeches are the concepts expressed and the words used to express them. Most of these orators lived in a time before any kind of visual aids were available (except for Moses, who had the stone tablets) a lack of visuals forced speakers to focus on the message.
People will say that we live in an MTV-world, where everyone is so accustomed to bright colors and flashy packaging that they can't pay attention to anything else. If you believe that, then incorporate stunning visuals into your presentations. But remember that glitz without substance is just like a tin-foil necklace--something to be tossed aside and forgotten at the earliest opportunity.