Your laptop or PC keyboard has 26 letters on it along with numbers, symbols and punctuation marks. When that keyboard is connected to a projector to run PowerPoint slides, my favorite is Letter ‘B’. Curious about why I love Letter B? … then read on.
Many ‘Best-in-Class’ workplace presenters embrace the power of ‘Visual Silence’ – the practice of not having slides on the screen for specific portions of the presentation. They only have slides visible when the they support what they’re saying.
Those periods of blank screen help keep the audience’s attention on the presenter and clearly direct their eyes to the relevant slides when they’re back on. Audiences have all had to suffer through endless slide shows, which quickly approaches the pain level of ‘Death by PowerPoint’. Those periods of ‘Silence’ give audiences a necessary visual break.
Three simple ways to accomplish ‘Visual Silence’:
- Program in blank or plain colored slides into the PowerPoint sequence and remember to change to them when needed. Works fine but does take some time to program in and isn’t flexible.
- Turn off the projector. Easier to do with a functioning projector remote. However, the projector may need to go through a warm-up cycle before you can use it again – like a copier or printer. And the change in room noise level between projector on and off can be annoying.
- Hit letter ‘B’. With a properly set up system, ‘B’ causes the screen image to go black. The projector is still on and hitting ‘B’ again shows the last slide up. If you prefer, hitting ‘W’ causes the screen to turn white.
With a properly designed audience-centric presentation that has specific periods without any slides, ‘B’ makes it easy to cut to ‘Visual Silence’ as needed. Simple, easy and flexible. See why it’s my favorite letter?