Business presentations have become a major communication medium. Meetings without slides are virtually unthinkable. Often an intercultural element comes into play, unnoticed by the presenter and the listeners. International teams in big corporations are common today. And English is being used worldwide as a corporate language even in non-american businesses. What advise can be given to business people who face the challenge of making a presentation in front of listeners of sometimes very different cultural backgrounds? Continue reading...

How often does it happen that a piece of information we want to talk about in a presentation is far too complex to be put on one slide? The slide would be so confusing that it could put the listeners off rather than helping them to understand what we are talking about. Complex illustrations in a printed document can be taken in and digested by the reader in her own time; and they can be revisited at leisure. A presentation is a life event. The presenter sets the pace. All the listeners can do is follow that pace. It is our responsibility as presenters to break down the information density and simplify content so we can present it in chunks that our listeners are able to digest. When it comes to visual information, there are three ways to do that effectively: layering, highlighting, and zooming. Continue reading...

The amount of information available to us over the internet grows rapidly. Recent advances in computer technology as well as software design make it easier than ever before for anybody with a computer to visualize all kinds of data. But, the same data can be visualized in very different ways — to serve very different purposes. Alex Lundry, Vice President and Director of Research at TargetPoint, talks about the political power of data visualization and offers a few short lessons about visual literacy. Continue reading...