I am going to advise all of you to engage in a cardinal sin of presenting. Give handouts to your audience! Virtually every presention expert will tell you not to do this. They are right if you are giving a Pitch presentation. In the case of a Pitch, you are trying to tell the audience a story and giving them a handout will be a distraction.
However, in the case of Organizing and Teaching presentations handouts are critical. In these presentations, you are always involved in some sort of dialogue and giving the audience handouts are a smart way to get people to jot their notes down as you present. These notes will help them during the discussion portion of the meeting. They also help the audience understand the structure of your presentation. Many people have trouble tracking a presentation as it occurs and the handout provides a breadcrumb trail for them to follow.
Now, when I say handouts, I am referring to a very specific best practice. That is, I build a visual storyboard of the presentation on an 11×17 piece of paper and give it to the audience to take notes on. This gives the audience the entire presentation in front of them on a single sheet of paper. They love it!
Thanks for tuning in.
DK
modernpresenter 
February 3rd, 2011 at 8:48 am
Agreed. The “no handouts rule” is more of a guideline. I keep the PPT handouts for nearly every class I’ve ever been to in the military. They’re excellent for note-taking. As much as I like having something electronic, there’s something irreplaceable about pen and paper.
Command and Staff meetings (organizing) may also merit printouts, or at least abbreviated ones. Particularly when one slide might list all of the important events for a week, there’s simply too much information to write down in a timely manner. Having a printout calendar to take notes on, or to take back with them, helps immensely.
June 30th, 2011 at 12:23 pm
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