PowerPointless

Slate has a fun slideshow on bad PowerPoint: PowerPointless.

"The ostensible purpose of a slideshow is provide illuminating visual aids or illustrate an important quote, rule, or formula: Only problem is this almost never happens."

Seven Lessons for Presentations

Marta Kagan writes on 7 Lessons From the World's Most Captivating Presenters.  Drawing insights from the presentations of Steve Jobs, Gary Vaynerchuck, and Scott Harrison, she uses specific examples (picture and slideshare presentations) to illustrate the following lessons:

• 1. Start with paper, not PowerPoint
• 2. Tell your story in three acts
• 3. A picture is worth 1000 words
• 4. Emotions get our attention
• 5. Use plain English
• 6. Ditch the bullet points
• 7. Rehearse like crazy

It's a relatively long post, but easy to skim, and well-worth the effort.

Five Common PowerPoint Mistakes

Brad Phipps posted on the The Five Most Common PowerPoint Mistakes

1. Too Many Slides
2. Too Many Words
3. Pointless animations
4. Not Enough Graphics
5. Complicated Visuals

Read the post at http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/11244.aspx

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation

See Peter Norvig's classic: The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

See also http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/making.html

Fight death by PowerPoint

Alexei Kapterev's slideshow on avoiding death by PowerPoint.

| View | Upload your own

Don McMillan's: "Life After Death By Powerpoint."

Is PowerPoint so bad it's funny?

Seth Godin on Powerpoint

Seth Godin writes:

"Powerpoint could be the most powerful tool on your computer. But it’s not. Countless innovations fail because their champions use PowerPoint the way Microsoft wants them to, instead of the right way.

Communication is the transfer of emotion.

Communication is about getting others to adopt your point of view, to help them understand why you’re excited (or sad, or optimistic or whatever else you are.) If all you want to do is create a file of facts and figures, then cancel the meeting and send in a report."

Four Components To A Great Presentation

1) Make yourself cue cards.

Don’t put them on the screen. Put them in your hand. Now, you can use the cue cards you made to make sure you’re saying what you came to say.

2) Make slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them.

Create slides that demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you’re saying is true not just accurate.

Talking about pollution in Houston? Instead of giving me four bullet points of EPA data, why not read me the stats but show me a photo of a bunch of dead birds, some smog and even a diseased lung? This is cheating! It’s unfair! It works.

3) Create a written document.

Put in as many footnotes or details as you like. Then, when you start your presentation, tell the audience that you’re going to give them all the details of your presentation after it’s over, and they don’t have to write down everything you say. Remember, the presentation is to make an emotional sale. The document is the proof that helps the intellectuals in your audience accept the idea that you’ve sold them on emotionally.

IMPORTANT: Don’t hand out the written stuff at the beginning! If you do, people will read the memo while you’re talking and ignore you. Instead, your goal is to get them to sit back, trust you and take in the emotional and intellectual points of your presentation.

4) Create a feedback cycle.

If your presentation is for a project approval, hand people a project approval form and get them to approve it, so there’s no ambiguity at all about what you’ve all agreed to.

The reason you give a presentation is to make a sale. So make it. Don’t leave without a “yes,” or at the very least, a commitment to a date or to future deliverables.

PowerPoint defense

Graphpaper.com writes In Defense of PowerPointism

"Microsoft’s PowerPoint is frequently blamed for the poor quality of many presentations and for a supposedly- disastrous state of communication in both the private and the public spheres. Public speakers are lambasted for their wooden stage presence, crippled by their over-reliance on projected slide shows and meaningless bullet-points. The slides themselves, too, are often rife with design crimes ranging from clip-art diarrhea to impenetrable verbosity."

But, they ask, is it the technology?

"I wonder if the majority of the world’s crappy presentations wouldn’t be just as bad, or even a hell of a lot worse, if the presenter didn’t have the slides to use as a crutch."

They finish with these tips:

"Slim down. If you are a good speaker, yes, consider dramatically limiting your use of slides to help you remember what you want to say...

You and your slides are inseparable. Do not worry about whether or not each slide makes sense by itself. The best slideshows, in fact, are almost completely nonsensical outside of the context of the live presentation...

Explore a variety of alternative presentation styles ...

Evolve. I’ve found that my style has evolved over time specifically because I’ve been watching and emulating other speakers I admire. Every presentation or keynote I attend, no matter how boring or tiresome, usually offers some insight ..."

thanks to Pogue's Posts

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

Guy Kawasaki writes on The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint based on his experience in venture capital.

"It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

"

Death to PowerPoint

Fast Company writes on Death To PowerPoint

1. Limit the number of slides. These days, it is not unusual for a 30-minute presentation to contain 30-40 slides. THIS IS WAY TOO MUCH! Think about it from the audience point of view: They have to sit there and listen to a disembodied voice read to them. They have better ways to spend their time. When it's me in the audience being bored, I just wish the presenter had sent the presentation to me and let me read it at my leisure rather than forcing me to attend the event. Bottom line, for a 30-minute presentation, choose the 5-10 most important slides. (Hint: 5 is better –- and so much braver –- than 10.)

2. Limit the information on each slide. There should be no more than 4-5 bulleted items or chart items on a slide. The fewer, the better. These can be fragments. You don't have to write complete sentences or include every thought you've ever had on the subject. These bullets should function as triggers or cues for elaboration. I once watched a terrific presentation by the president of a major ad agency whose slides each consisted of a single statement –- no headers, no details, very powerful.

3. Make sure the slide is readable. How many times have you found yourself struggling to read a slide because the font was too small? This is another happy outcome of cramming too much info onto a slide. Have mercy on your audience. Body copy should be at least 18 points. 20+ is better.

4. Use message titles. Instead of a slide with a headline that says "Performance," which in reality tells nothing about performance, consider a more complete thought such as "Company X significantly outperformed the S&P through 12/31/06". If you're stuck, you can often find the makings of a message title in your very first point on the slide. If you do nothing else as a result of reading this post, do this.

5. Use animation and other bells and whistles sparingly. Most of the effects PowerPoint offers are useless. There is, however, at least one winning effect, the slide transition, "cover down." This effect creates a smooth, professional transition from slide to slide and far outperforms the default transition. Make sure you click "apply to all." If you're bent on animating the information on the slide, experiment with those in the "peek" and "wipe" categories.

6. Automate effects as much as possible. There may be an item or two on an occasional slide that you would like to control by mouse click, but if you're clicking for each item to appear, trust me, it's too much work for you and too much "noise" for the audience.

7. Make liberal use of the "B" key. Most people don't know this, but if you press the letter B on your keyboard during a PowerPoint presentation, the screen will go dark. This is a wonderful feature if, for example, you get into an audience discussion and want to eliminate the distraction of the projected image. When you're ready to move on, press B again and you'll be right where you left off.

8. Do not use a laser pointer. I don't know whose brilliant idea this little piece of technology was, but not only is it distracting, it is quite ineffective, magnifying every movement or tremor of your hand. Can you say Stage Fright?

Amazing Powerpoint Presentations:

Seth Godin writes:

Here are the five rules you need to remember to create amazing Powerpoint presentations:

1. No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.
2. No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images.
3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions.
4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
5. Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.

Powerpoint

Sociable Media interviews Lawrence Lessig

Larry Lessig: Simple. Powerpoint has all sorts of power built into it, but it turns out the hardest thing is to keep it simple, and I think people connect with simple.

CA: Based on your experiences seeing other PowerPoints, how would you assess the current state of PowerPoint presentations in business and education?

LL: Awful beyond belief. If I were an executive at a major corporation, I'd ban it most of the time. The tool makes it too easy to hide reasoning. The viewer is less critical and less engaged. Less is communicated. This is not always the case, of course. Visuals are sometimes important for conveying some ideas. But bullet slides packed with data and text are worse than useless.

CA: How would you describe your own approach toward PowerPoint? How is it different from other PowerPoint approaches you've seen?

LL: I use the screen to frame what I am saying. One word, or a few words, so that the audience sees what they are hearing. But I never allow the screen to compete with what I am saying. I want them to be focusing on my words, not on PowerPoint graphics. So the word(s) on the screen help them tune into the words on the stage. Plus I use it to demonstrate abstract ideas, with drawings or moving objects. And it is brilliant for clips, etc.

See also these resources from Sociable Media