I've never been the biggest fan of Powerpoint. In my experience (which isn't professionally focused on the business of presenting - creating emotional flightpaths with stories, engaging audience attention, and formatting information for easy visual consumption - but sees that as a large part of my job) Powerpoint frequently leads to long lists of bullet points at variously/randomly tabbed levels, and a *lot* of drone. It just naturally leads the mind to wander, which is a crying shame since so many otherwise awesome pitches are given using Powerpoint, and so much great information disappears in the mists and fogs of audience inattention.
Greater people than I have talked about the foibles of Powerpoint style presentations, particularly Edward Tufte. Here's a great example Tufte wrote, dissecting some classic NASA Powerpoint slides after the shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry after orbit. I don't pick on NASA or Powerpoint any more than Tufte, it's just an example. But I see these kinds of slides all the time (and it's also not a knock on the smart people who make them - they've been trained to do this, and usually work in companies that encourage it). Jared Spool is another such person.
Like many, I get bored with so much artificially bulleted information. Sometimes it's just better in a document. This blogging format took off for a reason, after all. Sometimes it's not that I want to drift off, my mind just can't take the format anymore. "No, not more bullets!!!" - who hasn't thought that at some point. And sometimes it's the right information but it's coming at the wrong time, like when I've seen the same kinds of slides for 6 hours already. So here's the first two slides I presented today, in an all day meeting that started at 8:00am, where I came on at 3:00pm. At risk of wasting time and engagement to focus on being "the fun cool guy" which is distracting all in it's own right, I do think there are occasions where you can strike a balance.
My aim today was to start my presentation by reinvigorating some audience attention with a few seconds of fun. Judging by the iPhone vuvuzela horns I heard on the conference phone - this time it worked. Enjoy, and good luck USA and England! And see you next time Aussie Socceroos :)
If you don't know me, just note that I'm Australian, I live and work in the US and I also work with a bunch of English dudes :) The slides! >>
