Powerpoint Hooplapalooza

It's funny how certain things come together in the right time. Derek, James, Mike, Rob and I were working on a video that talks about the things that a speaker shouldn't do when presenting breakout sessions and we're still waiting on Derek to edit it. He should be done in a few days. Many of the concerns were the incorrect way of using Powerpoint and the over-reliance of it.

That said, Jason Langridge also coincidentally made a blog post about Death by Powerpoint, where he mentioned a really good tip Steve Ballmer once told him. Let me distill into one sentence.

"Passionate about one thing."

Where the audience will only remember one thing and that you're very passionate about it. Go on to read his post to find out some tips and tricks.

On top of that, one of my favorite websites on presenting, Presentation Zen, just published an article titled "Is it finally time to ditch Powerpoint?". This is an indepth look at how presentation gurus tend to make the mistake that bad presentation is the fault of Powerpoint, but in fact it is the fault of the speaker. Powerpoint is just a tool. I like how he took a stab at Powerpoint with this slide :

Maybe this should be the only slide that Chalk Talk speakers should show before they begin. His summary, sums (no pun intended) it all.

So, is it finally time to ditch PowerPoint? Hardly, but it is long past time to ditch the use of the ubiquitous bulleted-list templates found in both PowerPoint and Keynote. And it’s long past time that we realized that putting the same information on a slide that is coming out of our mouths usually does not help — in fact usually hurts our message. Next time you plan a presentation, then, start by using a pencil and pad, a whiteboard, or a stick in the sand — anything except jumping headfirst into slideware on your computer with its templates, outlines, and content wizards that may point you down a path you wish not to go. And as you examine your work from previous talks remember this rule of thumb: if your presentation visuals taken in the aggregate (e.g., your “PowerPoint deck”) can be perfectly and completely understood without your narration, then it begs the question: why are you there?

Amen.

 

Technorati tags: presenting, presentations, speaking, speakers, medc, events

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 11, 2007
  Lecturers at universities are often clueless about the happenings of the real world... I should know - I study at university and live/work in the real world. ...One of my lecturers still believes that Apples are better than PCs... Ahahaha!