In terms of experts on presentation design, they don’t come much better than Garr Reynolds. I have been reading Garr’s blog, Presentation Zen for a couple of months now and his posts constantly reveal new, exciting ideas we can add to our presentations.
This article takes a look at the decision we have to make between scope or depth in our presentations. Should we cover a wide variety of topics at a shallow level or should we cover a smaller number of topics but look at them in more detail?
My belief is that for the majority of class presentations the important thing is to concentrate on depth, rather than scope. Too often we feel we must prove to the class and the professor that we know a lot about a subject and so we begin to talk about everything that could possibly be related to it. What happens, when we do this, is that we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to show a real understanding of any one particular topic.
I think that during our presentations we should focus on two or three important ideas and go into a deeper analysis of these. Not only will this show our understanding of the topic but it will be a greater benefit to our classmates.
“Make a choice about what is important and let go of the rest.”