How NOT to Use PowerPoint!

JDMurray

For those of you who make PowerPoints as part of your job, please heed the advice: YouTube - How NOT to use PowerPoint!

astorrs

+1

So as not to cause "Death by PowerPoint" everyone should read these 3 authors books:

Nancy Duarte, Garr Reynolds and Cliff Atkinson

Please... ??:

JDMurray

Do those books cover the situation where the presenter shows a very simple, well-made PP slide for 20 minutes while droning on about something nobody in the audience cares about? Give me something new to look at every 60 seconds, plz!!

Slowhand

I find PowerPoint presentations to be a great way to catch up on my sleep. Whenever I go to conventions and events, I try to catch as many presenters with a statistics-and-charts fetish as I can.

astorrs

JDMurray wrote: »

Do those books cover the situation where the presenter shows a very simple, well-made PP slide for 20 minutes while droning on about something nobody in the audience cares about? Give me something new to look at every 60 seconds, plz!!

All 3 would agree with you, after 60 seconds that slide better not be up there any more.

Talic

Woh JD, they just showed this in my communications class, talk about a coincidence

JDMurray

Talic wrote: »

Woh JD, they just showed this in my communications class, talk about a coincidence

I might be the guy sitting right behind you!

msteinhilber

I can't stand awful presentations... but it's so common these days.

I thought it was interesting when I was researching various schools masters programs and I came across the SANS Institute and I knew that they required several conferences in which you attend, two of which you are to perform a 30 minute presentation. They apparently have had some horrendous presentations as well, so they specify the requirements:

15 slides, 1 title, 2nd is objective, 12 are content and the last is summar. 5 to 6 bullet points per slide. They even have a specific template to use.

We have a lot of people who LOVE PowerPoint at my work, and as such there are a lot of absolutely awful presentations - thankfully most of them are geared towards new real estate agent training and I don't have to sleep through them

skrpune

I love that video, it's a classic...and it's unfortunately a lot like far too many power point presentations that I've seen over the years. If you're going to do a presentation, use your power point slides as outlines with key points and to show pretty pictures. Anything more than that will make your audience awful surly!!

janmike

Thank you! JDMurray.

I had not seen this.

Angie1313

JDMurray wrote: »

I might be the guy sitting right behind you!

Yea and I'll be right behind you trying to keep my eyes open and awake!

Slowhand

Angie1313 wrote: »

Yea and I'll be right behind you trying to keep my eyes open and awake!

Who are all you people, and why do you keep following me to class?

On a slightly (read "incredibly minuscule") more serious note, there are two books I can add to the list:

Death by PowerPoint (An actual how-to book)

Death by PowerPoint (Humorous book about what not to do in the workplace, including how to kill your career with boring PowerPoint slides.)

the_Grinch

Through years of doing powerpoints (started as a freshmen in high school, so about 8 or 9 years) I've learned the perfect style for Powerpoints. First, use Keynote it is about 10 times better. Second, video clips make the difference! I've found that having funny video clips that illustrate a point work extremely well. Third, follow all the steps pointed out by the Youtube video.

In my Senior Project Class we all had to make programs to show the class. Now, given the amount of time we had there was no way to have a bug free fully working program. My professor told us to show 3 fully working functions of the program. Two groups decided the best thing to do was a live demonstration of those functions. Both had technical difficulties that extended their presentations and stopped the flow. I forced my group to record the program with desktop software and put it in our Keynote. It took awhile, but we had 3 fully working functions with no lose of flow! (felt like tooting my own horn today!)