How a Relational Powerpoint Presentation Saved my Bacon
When I bought Bob Lane’s book Relational Presentation in early April, I knew two things about PowerPoint—I didn’t like using it for presentations and everyone expects you to have a PowerPoint. Every meeting, demo, and training I have attended in the last 10 years featured content delivered via PowerPoint—all linear shows with bulleted slides. When the lights went down, so did our eyelids.

In my small business, www.susanguggenheim-is.com, I train lots of different groups in basic and advanced computing skills—from older adults, to teens, to the newly unemployed—and I needed a way of delivering diverse topics at any time, often spontaneously. I thought relational presentation fit my bill exactly.
I used Bob’s templates, added my graphics, and went for a Nested presentation. After editing and testing, I felt ready to use the new training show.
Soon enough, an activities director for a senior residence called and we made an appointment for a 1-hour presentation. Upon arrival, I set up, kicked off my entry slide, and waited for folks to arrive in the activities room. First shock: the seniors were all over 85 and one was 92—not my usual 65-year-old crowd. And no one in the audience had ever used a computer! There went my presentation on basic desktop and mouse skills, two shows in my new relational deck. I had to punt, and this was a tough, hypercritical crowd. Who knew little old ladies could be so … well … unladylike!
I went for the resource slides, fired up Web page after Web page, and gave them “a tour of the Internet” presentation. They didn’t understand much of what I showed them, but they really liked my resource slides, saying they were “very nice”. They also loved my main, branded slide, “Look how pretty that is, with her name up there”, and said it was “magical” when I moved from slide-to-slide and back again.
The slides themselves were so visually appealing (and that’s all due to Bob because I did not create much of my own stuff), it helped lower their fear of computers, which allowed them to not worry about what they were supposed to learn. Best of all, it gave me confidence that I could get out of there alive. I can’t wait to take my interactive show before an audience it was developed for, but I’m also very excited to know that even with an unsuitable audience, I can still adjust to the circumstances and capture a group’s attention.
Filed under: Presenter Stories on June 18th, 2009 | No Comments »





