Never introduce yourself to an audience when your title slide is showing. If you must have a title slide, let it show for a few seconds in silence, then turn off the PowerPoint to introduce yourself and your topic.

Here's an experiment I have carried out scores of workshops.

The audience is then asked which way they prefer.

Of the hundreds faced with that choice in the last three years, only one person chose the first way.

Why that overwhelming reaction?

Because your audience wants to get to grips with who you are before they ingest info from your machine. Deny them that moment and you remove a big chunk of your personal credibility. You seem to be avoiding them. You're not 'fronting up to them'. You're not 'looking them in the eye'. The majority of presenters do exactly that to us all. Then most blunder right on with non-stop PowerPoint, getting their cues from the screen, and reading out, word-for-word, what we can read for ourselves.

It's part of a much bigger problem - world-wide audience-abuse by PowerPoint. The vast majority of presenters use the screen as a way of avoiding the spotlight, somehow forgetting that PowerPoint cannot persuade. People persuade. Don't get me wrong; electronic aids are useful for showing information, but only when they support you, not when they replace you.

Have the courage to make your presentations presenter-based. Have the courage to be seen. Have the courage to turn PowerPoint off between slides.

How? Look back at the previous PowerPoint tips in my blog - especially tip 3: use the 'B' button, and tip 8: make PowerPoint your servant, not your master.

Isn't it interesting that very few people know how to turn PowerPoint off? And yet it just takes one button.

Michael