25 October 2005

Presentation tips from Japan

Some innovative methods from presentation masters of Japan:

Takahashi method: Masayoshi Takahashi uses nothing but text in his slides. The text is huge,usually numbering no more than ten characters. Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig has a similar approach, sometimes called the Lessig method. Here's an example of the Takahashi method in action.

Monta method: This approach involves showing a sentence with parts of it covered or a question with the answer covered. The presenter reveals the answer after giving the audience a bit of time to think. This is a way to get your audience more involved. Here's an example of the Monta method in action.

I read about these methods at Presentation Zen, where you can read more about the Takahashi and Monta methods, as well as many others.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Less is more, and
less is better.

This not only applies to your visual aids, it also applies to the idea(s) you want to convey.

It is easy to fall into the trap of trying to say too much in too short a period of time.

Your intention is to be informative; however, the result is you are boring and confusing.

Graeme Watson said...

Ok Dave,

I gave it a try, I delivered a presentation to around 15 staff outlining the content of our new program of seminars and short courses.

I only used a few words per slide, the bare essentials, basically the name of the course and the guest presenter. No dates, No costs, No descritions.

It actually worked really well, it conveyed the essential information really well.

MORE importantly though, it was really east to create the presentation, it only took 20 minutes to prepare.

i also used a fair amount of variation in the background colours to keep people's attention.