Some of you might be asked to give a presentation without using printed handouts in order to preserve the environment. This means that you can’t give people printed handouts and they won’t be able to take note of points relevant to them in the presentation. Here are some issues and their solutions to giving a presentation with the no handouts rule.
Deliver The Keywords Carefully
When your audience is guided by handouts, they can highlight the points they find to be compelling to them. But when they have no handouts, they’re looking at you as their main focus. They are depending on you to deliver the message with more clarity. Try to repeat note-worthy points. Make them important enough to note down. You may even ask the audience to write down some things. Telling them “Please note this very important point”, or “This point is really important”, etc.
Minimize Explanatory Text
In this context, too much text will only confuse the audience. Make it as easy as possible for them to pick up the main points by minimizing extra text in your slides. If a sentence is short and relevant, people are more likely to write it down.
Try To Look From The Audience’s Point of View
Looking from their point of view, they probably don’t know how much they’ll need to take note of. They also don’t know what they might miss during the presentation while they’re writing. You can ease their worries by telling them that you’ll be making notes to these slides available through email after the presentation finishes.
Summarize And Repeat Points To Note
Use the last slide to present a summary of all points. Write them in a way that people are able to identify the portion that they should be taking notes of. This makes sure that no one has missed any of the notes. You can send a document containing more detail and a better summary to people through email. The event organizer might have this information, confirm in advance.
Having to work with less paper can present us with new challenges. Adjusting to these new circumstances can give us a new outlook on how to plan and deliver presentations in today’s world. The no handouts rule should save time and money if we can manage to work with it.
Image Courtesy:
Finished hantouts for Wikimedia Conference Japan 2009 by Wikimedia [CC BY 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons
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