To fully understand the rules that govern just how much information you can include in your presentation slides, you need to appreciate a fundamental of human nature namely, that we have an innate desire to be The First to Know.

Unfortunately, most of the presentation visuals that we see are designed with the mistaken belief that audiences will actually wait for the presenter to walk them through them. Wrong.

When the technology of communications was slower, we took a more historical approach to news - news was about what happened. We were accustomed to waiting for the news, and news had a time: Did you see the morning paper? Did you hear the evening news?

But with electronic advancements, we came to think of news more in terms of what is happening at the moment. Film brought us motion, but video feeds brought us there. Screens eclipsed paper as the preferred venue for getting the latest. Newspapers folded, first afternoon editions and then even icons of Americana - think Herald Tribune. Instead of being the first source of news in the world, to survive newspapers became more feature oriented providing value only for less perishable and less immediate content.

Cable News Network took a huge gamble that people all over the world would watch news twenty-four hours a day - news on the peoples timetable, not the providers. News on demand. Fulfillment for those with the desire to be the first to know.

What does all this have to do with presentation design? You dont need to be a news junkie to share a basic trait of humans and other intelligent animals curiosity. Curiosity is basic to survival, and we have evolved as creatures who need to learn what we can quickly. So this same desire that humans have to be the first to know translates to every event that involves new information uptake. During a presentation, audience members want the same control, and are basically unwilling to wait for you, the presenter, to help them be the first to know.

Once the curiosity about a slide has been satisfied, audience members usually will give the presenter their attention.

But when a new slide first appears on the screen, all eyes, like moths to the flame, tune to the new image, and immediately begin the race to be the first to know what the slide is all about. Its not their fault! Theyre human!

Only when every member of the audience is thoroughly convinced that they know exactly what the slide means will they lend their attention back to what you are saying.

And until this point you realistically might as well not be there. Oh, sure, you can act as most do and begin to describe the elements in the slide, but for all intents and purposes, it matters little what you do. You could drop your pants. You could leave the room. You could tell off-color jokes. But until the audience has determined for themselves exactly what all the data and word tracks on the screen mean to them, you have approximately 0% of their attention.

With most of the slides we see in business presentations today, this is where the disaster begins. You see, the typical slide contains so much information that a typical audience member would need more than 30 seconds just to read the material, much less absorb it. The reading process is delayed, though, because first the viewer tries to decide for herself where to begin, and which piece of information is most important. Clues to the relative value of the information are often erroneous, however, as audiences base them on such things as the size of the type or placement on the screen.

For this reason, you must ask yourself how long it will take the average person to discover for themselves all the information you have in your slide. The more time it takes the average person to absorb and assimilate the information they see, the greater the chance you have to lose your audience.

So what does this tell us? Of course, there is only one truly viable solution, and that is to limit, by all means possible, the amount of information that is released with each click of your mouse.

The less time it takes the audience to discern the new information, the sooner theyll get back to you and start to listen to what you really mean to say on the slide.

J. Douglas Jefferys brings twenty-five years of corporate training experience to his role as a principal of PublicSpeakingSkills.com [http://www.publicspeakingskills.com]. His firm changes presenters lives forever with their unique apporach to training presentation design and delivery skills. Discover how to design and deliver presentations that audiences actually listen to by visiting their website now.

Bad Presentation Skills - How To Avoid Them
No one willingly gives a presentation when they dont believe in their presentation skills, but a lot of people are forced to in their every day lives. Sometimes these presentations are required through school or work or some other event but most peop...

How To Make Effective PowerPoint Presentations
Today, PowerPoint presentations have become ubiquitous in the business world. Almost all corporate organizations depend on PowerPoint presentations to present their projects to the clients.These presentations help the organizations convince and attra...

Learn Effective Presentation Tips
If you are due to make a presentation and the anxiety is getting on your nerves, the following presentation tips can help you. These tips can also be learned through presentation skills training course but here is an overview.Some of the suggestions...

Effective Presentation Skills - 3 Tips to Engage Our Audience
The process of engaging our audience goes beyond the simple act of speaking in public. Many public speakers fail to engage their audiences with their enthusiasm or knowledge of their subject -- just being on the podium does not guarantee that we wil...

Effective Presentation Skills - Eliminate Pause Fillers
Do you know what pause fillers are in a presentation? They are the uh, urm, you know, hmm or now littered in your speech when you are making the presentation.When we forget a word or a point in our presentation, we tend let out these strange sounds a...

Nightmare On Presentation Street - 7 Nightmares When Making Presentations And How To Overcome Them
In the many workshops on public speaking and on making presentations that I have attended, many participants when asked about their worries usually produce a very similar list of factors. The top 7, in no particular order, are listed here with some s...

10 Habits of Highly Effective Presenters
Many people ask me why some presentations are effective while others are not. This is a very complex question as there are several components to an effective presentation. One component is the various habits displayed by great presenters when they ar...

Tips on Starting a Powerpoint Presentation
So you plan to start on a powerpoint presentation. Before starting on the presentation, you have to make some preparations. You have to first organize your presentation. You can do this by making an outline of the major points of the presentation, an...

Presenting Effectively
Introduction:Whether you are a seasoned orator or a novice speaker, you can improve your presentation skills and enhance your credibility through planning, presentation, and practice. This section contains essential information on every aspect of pub...

Effective Presentations - 5 Surefire Tips to Make You a Better Presenter
Often, the main thing most presenters overlook is that making a presentation should not be a one way thing. Many presenters simply get up, put on the PowerPoint slide show, run through 20 slides talking about the bullet points and then summarizing, l...