If you’re presenting live, you want people watching you, not your slides. If you’re presenting live, you have a captive audience that’s there for you, focused on you. It’s important that they hear what you’re saying, and any visuals behind you should reinforce those points.
Not verbatim. If your live presentation slides are full of bullet points, your audience will frantically try to read everything. They’re no longer listening to you, and it’s that much harder to remember what they heard (or read) after you’re done.
Webinars, however, are a different story. They can hear you but not see you. It’s far more passive, even vs. something live and in-person. And if it’s literally just a slide deck they’re watching, it’s OK to have more words.
Why? Your audience probably isn’t listening that closely to you anyway. They’re multitasking. Checking email, cleaning up their desk. When they glance up, you want them to be able to quickly catch up.
Bullets or key points on Webinar slides, therefore, are far more helpful. In this context, they’ll help your audience learn faster. And if Webinar slide decks are far more likely to get passed around. So if they help tell your story, with or without the soundtrack, that helps you too.
Matt,
I appreciate the insight and the reminder that there are no “hard and fast” rules for presenting. Every presentation should take into account the needs of the audience.