[Coding Horror] Every slide should provoke a reaction from the audience — be it controversial, unexpected, amusing, or a meditative Zen koan. Prod your audience. Do this not only to keep them awake, but to engage their brains. Deliver a series of short, sharp shocks that jolt your audience into a heightened state of engagement. Once your audience has engaged with your presentation, that’s when you trick them into learning. The very best presentations entertain and educate– the common portmanteu is edutainment. The archetypal example of edutainment is Sesame Street.

In last years post “Time To Ditch Powerpoint?”, I put together a list of basic guidelines of what I found to be great presentations. Jeff does touch on an interesting point though - people always learn more when they’re having fun at it.

While I’m not sure that I’d want my slides to be “edutainment”, it’s important that the audience is engaged. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to presentations where the presenter is just reading their slides, boring the snot out of everyone.

While it’s use the basic “rules” in each presentation, the context of the presentation and who your audience should always drive the content and how it’s presented.