Lessons from Buzzfeed: Why It’s Important to Map out the Basics

Check out this recent post by the ever popular social sharing site, Buzzfeed. They asked some of their American staff writers to do a fairly simple task- fill in a blank map of Europe with the appropriate countries. Well, it turned out to be quite a disaster for most of the participants as all of them failed to fill out the countries in the correct boundaries. Many of them even wrote, “wow, so this is what my college education got me” along the borders of the Scandinavian countries they couldn’t label.So how do we tie this back into presentation preparation? It’s simple as understanding basic concepts, like geography of our neighboring countries, should be understood before the big picture. Prior to any presentation – start simple as basic understanding, just like basic geography, is imperative in any powerpoint.With any big presentation it is imperative to mark your basics first before jumping into the small details first, such as which bar graph to use or which font color to highlight your main points in. Prior to you even starting with your outline list all your main points that will be listed on your presentation slides. Getting your main ideas outlined first is imperative before working on the rest of your presentation.This article speaks a basic truth that most Americans spend a decent percentage of their lives in an educational setting to learn fundamental values such as physics, grammar and world geography- which in this case seems to be a huge failure. Forgetting your main themes, and the whole purpose of your powerpoint presentation – never forget your purpose, and make sure this isn’t clouded in spending hours picking the perfect template or searching for the an attention grabbing quote.You can read the full article here.