Make your presentation simple.  We all get tied up in the detail. We can’t see the wood for the trees.

Your job as a presenter is to make it easy for the audience.  Keep working at your talk, your presentation  – the single big idea, until it is clear, simple and concise.

Only when you can write the big idea of your talk in one sentence are you ready to start preparing the rest of it.

The good news is people remember very little about any talk – typically they recall 3-4 ideas, not more.  Therefore, don’t try and introduce too many concepts – make it simple and make it clear.

When we train people at Benjamin Ball Associates for effective presentations, we often use the 30 second summary test

The 30 second summary test

You will know you have it right when you can summarise your talk in 30 seconds; or you can be confident that you know how someone in your audience will report your talk to someone else.

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”
Charles Mingus