I’m a long-time fan of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and I’m please it’s returning. Old-timers like me remember the big, fundamental gag that ran through a lot of the earlier stuff about the meaning of life, the universe and everything. They finally settled on the meaningless answer ’42’ purely because they couldn’t actually define the question properly.
A couple of friends of mine have asked what I thought of their presentations this week and been rather taken about when I asked them what the presentation was for. “It’s about X†I was told: or “I’m talking about Yâ€.
Sadly, that’s not good enough – your presentation can’t be about something, it must be for something. The question that a presenter needs to be able to answer is “What is your presentation for?†If you can’t answer that question, you run the risk of simply telling your audience lots of “stuff†– and that’s a bit of a blunderbuss approach… you might hit something, but it’s hardly efficient!
Don’t go and make a presentation “about my company†or “about my projectâ€: make it “to encourage people to buy from my company†or “to make people interested in joining the projectâ€. You’ll be much more effective, and efficient, that way.
