A Great Presentation Is Like A Good Espresso
by Jim Endicott (Originally appeared in Presentations magazine)
After dragging myself out of bed at 6:30 each morning, I shower, shave and
head out to order my morning coffee: a single tall mocha, light on the
chocolate, extra hot, and double-cup it please. With those relatively simple
instructions, you'd think that no matter where I went for my espresso, it
would all taste the same. But guess what? It doesn't. Even if I go back to
the same coffee shop, my "usual" tastes a little different from one day to
the next. All the ingredients remain the same – the coffee beans, the
chocolate, the milk – so how can it get screwed up?
The answer, of course, is that the flavor of a single tall mocha depends as much on the person
behind the counter as the ingredients in the cup.
When it comes to the quality of the presentations we create, the difference between a good
presentation and a great one seldom comes down to software. Instead, it's the person "behind
the counter" – crafting the message and using the tools creatively – who ultimately makes the
difference.
Among the many presentation graphics programs to choose from – PowerPoint, Freelance, Corel
Presentations, Astound – it really doesn't matter which one you decide to use. (I'm guessing that
statement got your attention.) Personally, I take it as a bit of an insult when someone describes
my presentation in terms of the software I used to make it. After all, you're probably not too
concerned about which Web development tool was used to lay out this newsletter, are you?
Regardless of the claims made by the world-class marketing organizations behind these products,
a truly great presentation doesn't hinge on clip-art galleries, transition effects, chart types or
bullet-point shapes. These things are all well and good, to the degree they can help you become
more productive (and occasionally, more creative). But a great presentation relies far more on
three mission-critical things that all grea