There is something about the legacy of the pandemic on the phrase “next slide please” it has almost become a joke during online meetings and presentations. Now as I attend in-person events, people are still making the same joke.
Of course part of the challenge, why this was happening, was the proliferation of online meetings (and events) using Zoom and Teams. Even though it was possible (and some would even say simple) for all the presenters in that meeting to share their slides, often all the slides would be “grouped” together and shared from a single machine. The result was that the person who “shared” the screen would then be the main presenter for all the slides and so any one else presenting would then be “forced” to ask for the “next slide please”.
This was done as it was much easier, especially with multiple presentations, for there to be one presentation. I often saw challenges when different people tried to share their presentations, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t and sometimes it was just a faff!
So what is the solution?
Of course with tools such as Teams you can easily pass control of the presentation to another person. You can take “control”.
With other tools this may not be possible, or you may not want to allow others to control the presentation, hence the next slide palaver that we see at events and in meetings.
One of my solutions is to not actually use slides when presenting.
