PowerPoint Before and After – A New Spin on the Old Agenda Slide

By Jon, on May 5th, 2009
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Recently I attended a workshop in New York City.  As most workshops go, it was a 2 hour presentation where the presenters offer you information and then hawk their services at the end.  The hawking was kept to a minimum though, so I was impressed.

Whenever I know I'm about to sit in on a presentation that will utilize PowerPoint, I get nervous.  Not for myself, but for the presenter.  I pray that they will wow me with a PowerPoint deck so amazing that I can't stop talking about it for days.  Of course, the odds are against me.  I'd say about 100-1 at best.  Wouldn't you agree?

The presentation started with an Agenda slide, like most do.  This is an important part of the presentation because you're framing what you'll be speaking about for the next however many minutes/hours.  It's a GREAT opportunity to set the tone for your presentation and to grab their attention by showing them something they may not have seen before.  The Agenda slide for said presentation, though, was the norm – a numbered list.  I was so saddened that I had to take a picture to post on Twitter.  You can see a picture of the slide here.

To help others learn how to create a memorable/original Agenda slide, I thought I'd show you a before/after of a deck I worked on with the guys at StayClassy.org (used with permission).

Before
Example of Bad Agenda Slide

Here are a few immediate takeaways.

  1. Like most slides, this one is bland and absent of color.  A numbered list makes sense, in theory, but not when you're trying to be memorable.
  2. The topics are not succinct enough and will most definitely be forgotten.  Keep it short and to the point. 
  3. Although the mistake wasn't made on this particular slide, bullet points are bad enough – don't use a sub-bullet point either.  Keep the points at a broad level and let the presentation itself fill in the details.

In order to grab the audience, I wanted to make an Agenda that I was pretty sure they hadn't seen before (remember those 100-1 odds?).  Here is the final product:

After
Good Agenda Slide

  1. Think Visually – Instead of the same old bulleted list, I tried to think of a visually engaging way to show a progression.  Here you still see the numbers from the bulleted list, but instead they're in a horizontal line of circles. 
  2. Be Vibrant – Many presentations are totally void of color.  Using colors, especially vibrant ones, excite the senses.  The colors were simply chosen from the presentation's color pallette (there are a bunch to choose from by default).
  3. Keep it SIMPLE – Each numbered item has been shortened from its original version.  The shortened version gives the audience just enough information to create a framework, but still gives the presenter enough room to build.  Also, the slide itself remains simple.  I chose to utilize the white background so the colors contrasted even more. 

This slide was created to build, so each point shows up when the presenter is ready to introduce it.  I'm a fan of builds to keep the audience engaged and to avoid any read-ahead. 

Do you have any examples of interesting Agenda slides?

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