The Mobile Presenter

The use of humour in presentations is, ironically, a common source of fear and loathing. This is mainly because people confuse humour with telling jokes. From experience, jokes told during presentations are usually not very funny at all and cause more of a collective groan than laughter. Also, the use of humour is often seen as unprofessional, especially in more business-oriented surroundings. But humour, laughter, and an element of play are natural parts of being human, so why should they be banned from presentations?

One of the simplest definitions of what a story is (which is going back to the greek philosopher Aristotle) is that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. As Kendall Haven points out, though, that definition doesn't really help. Otherwise,

John went to the grocery store. He bought some milk, then drank it.

would be a story.

The Mystery of Picasso is a 1956 movie that lets us watch Picasso painting. Nothing else - it's not a documentary in the usual sense, it's really only showing how one of the most popular and influential painters of the 20th century works. Which makes for a fascinating film.

During the 78 minutes of the film, we can see Picasso working on a wide variety of paintings - from very abstract to more realistic ones. He's also using various different techniques. But there's a common theme:

A laser pointer seems like a useful tool for a speaker. You can use it to point out certain aspects or details in your slides, even if you're far away from the projected screen. It can, however, also be very annoying for your audience.

Meetings tend to always have the same length - an hour, usually. But is there a reason for this, other than tradition and the default setting in organiser software? Why not schedule a meeting to only take 22 minutes? It's the same with presentations. Why do they have to take an hour? Why not 15 minutes including Q&A?

When you are asked to give a presentation, have you considered a format other than the usual hour? How long do you really need to cover your topic? Don't feel obliged to fill an hour when it would only take you 20 minutes to discuss your main point. Adding content that's not strictly relevant - just so that you can fill a timeslot - won't make your presentation any better or more memorable; quite the contrary actually.