Tuesday, July 15, 2008
How not to make Powerpoint presentations
If you are an American office employee, you no doubt prepare, deliver, or at least sit through presentations that depend on Powerpoint. I myself use Powerpoint very sparingly, and am troubled by its influence on the actual thinking of our employees. Why? Because I believe that if you cannot articulate your points without resorting to more than a few slides the odds are high that you have not thought through what you are saying with adequate rigor. Perhaps that is because you do not think with discipline, or perhaps it is because you spend too much time on the appearance of your presentation rather than its content. Either way, the longer a Powerpoint presentation goes, the more likely it is to contain a slide that I will mock in my mind, or perhaps even out loud. To avoid that ugliness, I usually impose a five slide limit on presentations to be made to me, hope for two or three, and get seven or eight.
In any case, if you must use Powerpoint, be sure to follow these useful instructions.
7 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Jul 15, 11:28:00 AM:
TH,
I beg to differ somewhat - perhaps because as a business consultant, Powerpoint is a pretty big tool of my trade. I also would like to believe that my ability to put together compelling material using PPT is a competitive advantage. Of course, the real competitive advantage is that I do the thinking that enables the design of compelling material.
PPT, like many tools, can be used well or can be used very poorly. A well designed presentation can be exceptionally illuminating in a way that is additive to discussion. You're right that most people don't do this and that too many people try to substitute slides for thinking - but that's really not the fault of the presentation software.
By 
Andrew X, at
Tue Jul 15, 12:57:00 PM:
What comes to mind of course, is Lincoln's eloquent Gettysburg Address.
Powerpoint version.
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/gettysburg/
By Andrew X, at
Tue Jul 15, 12:59:00 PM:
(Shouldn't that link above automatically hyperlink? What'd I miss?)
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Tue Jul 15, 01:31:00 PM:
I don't use Powerpoint. I use liquor and women.
By , at
Tue Jul 15, 03:03:00 PM:
Liquor and women work well, but PowerPoint is a great tool. Using it requires repeated drafts because I like concise statements, so it's the perfect tool for meeting preparation. For presentations though, I hate it- some people are way too slavish to their slides. They read them to the room. It's terrible!
By apex, at
Wed Jul 16, 12:53:00 AM:
I once almost throttled my boss when he complained my slides didn't bring the point across without the accompanying presentation.
By Mannning, at
Thu Jul 17, 11:33:00 PM:
Reminds me of the H. Silver presentation on how to compose a compelling proposal. Just don't show a picture of a horse, with the undertitle "Horse".
