There’s Something About PowerPoint
Did you know that August this year saw the 25th anniversary of Microsoft PowerPoint? I can sense the yawns already…
To honour this great event, the BBC New Magazine knocked up a few interesting articles by way of sharing the boredom. The first was called The problem with PowerPoint, which contains a nine slide PowerPoint presentation – geddit? – on the history of the development of this piece of software. It also provides a presentation guru’s perspective on the weaknesses of PowerPoint, at least in terms of how it is usually used.
There problems include:
- The screens are magnets for everyone’s eyes, negating all important eye-contact between speaker and audience
- Reading and listening distracts the audience and adds to the monotony by removing surprise
- Slides often function as notes and verbal crutches rather than visual aids
- The amount of material in an average presentation leads to information overload
- Bullet points are a poor substitute for visual aids
In the interests of fair-play, that famous BBC value (he said ironically), another article collected the thoughts of readers on Your PowerPoint highs and lows. The worse of these was someone whose entire office was made redundant by PowerPoint, and another in which a senior executive did a stand-up turn at a Christmas dinner with every joke in bullet-point form! The pain, the pain…
The best were the ones where presenters used cartoons and other graphics, or had one word per slide. For my money, one of the best uses of PowerPoint I’ve seen was by a guy called Tim Lee, a former scientist who now does stand-up comedy using PPT. See him in action here and here.
Confession time – I use PowerPoint alot and I have not always done so in the most effective way. But I’m keen to improve, so I’m taking a course next month on ‘Advanced Presentations Using Microsoft PowerPoint’. Hopefully I’ll get a few tips.
Here are a few articles I’ve read on PPT best practice and alternatives to it that I think are worth a read.
Steve Jobs & Guy Kawasaki – PowerPoint Best Practices
Teach Students Alternative Uses For PowerPoint
What Are The Best Fonts for Making PowerPoint Presentation Slides
PowerPoint Alternatives: Different Tools For Spicing Up Your Presentations
I’m especially interested in hearing about your experiences with PowerPoint alternatives. Anyone? The best one we’ve come across recently can be seen in the embedded Prezi presentation above.
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Jordan
21 Nov, 2009
I read somewhere a goog while ago that Scott McNealy of Sun banned his employees from using PowerPoint… And the results were pretty good.
I can see his point.
Recently, Julie from survival solutions gave a presentation without PowerPoint and I got more out of it than her last presentation where she had a very slick PowerPoint presentation with soundtrack etc…
Jordan
21 Nov, 2009
Sorry I meant good not goog (Freudian slip maybe)
PS. If you don’t want to pay for PowerPoint software, openiffice.org does the job 99% as good for most people…
Allen Baird
21 Nov, 2009
Thanks for the comment Jordan. Do you think someone speaking without ANY visual aids is best, or is some alternative to PPT necessary? Or maybe a mixture?
Jordan McClements
25 Nov, 2009
Not really my area of expertise…
But in my experience I can honestly say that I have got at least as much out of presentations that did not have a PowerPoint presentation.
Though I guess if you were giving a presentation to a TV advertising agency, then a whiteboard and pen would not be appropriate..