More PowerPoint Woes

Last year I attended The Best Single Day Class Ever, taught by Prof. Tufte. He changed my outlook on PowerPoint for ever. Today in FCW magazine I found a pointer to 8 PowerPoint Train Wrecks, like the slide Bill Gates is presenting at left. While following some of the linked presentations, I came across this line from the shmula blog:

While at Amazon, we were all told by Divine Fiat that ALL presentations — regardless of kind, cannot ever be on Powerpoint. Period. Bezos prefers prose and actual thoughts slapped in a report — an actual paper report with paragraphs, charts, sentences, an executive summary, introduction of problem, research approach and findings (body of paper), conclusions and recommendations — not choppy, half-thoughts on a gazillion slides.

Thank goodness. I am not crazy after all.

That same blog post makes other good points, and links to an imagined Barack Obama "Yes We Can" PowerPoint deck. Hilarious.

Richard Bejtlich is teaching new classes in Europe and Las Vegas in 2009. Online Europe registration ends by 1 Apr, and seats are filling. "Super Early" Las Vegas registration ends 15 Mar.

Comments

JimmytheGeek said…
I dunno. I think Luke might have been persuaded by this approach:

http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/images/2007/09/06/darth_2.jpg
2:45 AM
Martin Roesch said…
I've tried to go to the "big picture & 3 words or less" mode of presentation, I find that my audiences prefer it and they certainly seem more engaged. I can say for a long training preso it might not work but for communicating big ideas (i.e. Sourcefire value prop) it's a great way to do things.
12:55 AM
Andy Steingruebl said…
Might I suggest http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cagxPlVqrtM

By comedian Don McMillan
1:12 PM
Anonymous said…
There used to be a website: powerpointisevil.com. Not there anymore. Did Prof. Tufte create that?
3:14 PM
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