Common mistakes people make when delivering PowerPoint Presentations

I have literally seen at least 400 different PowerPoint Presentations and probably only 100 would pass as "okay" and maybe 20 could be labeled as "excellent." I can go on about what mistakes that presenters make all day, but I think the biggest mistake that people make is that they put the work of the presentation on PowerPoint. It's not that hard to add animations and automated slides along with a bunch of bullet points (and please save me from another presenter that is going to put what they are saying into the PowerPoint presentation).

Naturally, having a tool that makes it simple to create a presentation that has all these bells and whistles appeals to people that aren't good presenters (not that it doesn't appeal to the good ones as well). This is because low-quality presenters want you to be more focussed on what is on their slides rather than on them. This would be okay if PowerPoint could magically make great presenters out of these types, but it doesn't.

Everyone loses when a speaker tries to puts all the work of the presentation off on PowerPoint because the chance of getting a great PowerPoint Presentation out of someone that can't present is close to none. The first group of people that lose is the audience. Now, not only does the audience have to try to devulge information from the speaker but they have this huge distraction of a "presentation" that's making noises and might be changing slides at the wrong time or may have random animations that aren't even on topic. The speaker loses as well, because not only does he have an audience that didn't get anything out of his presentation (which they probably wouldn't have anyways), but there is a really good chance that the PowerPoint is not going to flow (and might even interupt the presenter if he or she gets off of their slides).

I think the best solution to this problem is that if a person is not that good of a presenter and they MUST present, he or she should spend some time on techniques to become a presenter instead of spending all that time making his or her presentation jump around the screen and make noises. Whenever I put together a presentation, I put together my spoken presentation first, and then set up a PowerPoint to accompany me. I can outline my presentation, giving my audience key points that I am making and I can include all of my visual aids (and I promise that my slides will flow with my presentation, I won't get lost and neither will my audience).

The best advice I could give anyone is to keep it as simple as possible. Not only will it keep your audience focussed on YOUR presentation and not what is going on on the screen, but it also greatly reduces the chances of something going wrong during the middle of your presentation.