{"id":36,"date":"2010-10-20T08:30:49","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T12:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/?p=36"},"modified":"2010-10-18T14:10:40","modified_gmt":"2010-10-18T18:10:40","slug":"let%e2%80%99s-talk-about-powerpoint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/?p=36","title":{"rendered":"Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Talk about PowerPoint"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by John J. Walters<\/p>\n<p>I ran across the best PowerPoint presentation I have ever seen today about the evil among us that is known as PowerPoint.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a bit of a curiosity.\u00c2\u00a0 While others are content to make lists such as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bnet.com\/blog\/salesmachine\/top-10-reasons-your-presentation-sucks\/4883?tag=content;drawer-container\">Top 10 Reasons Your Presentation Sucks!<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bnet.com\/blog\/salesmachine\/10-big-reasons-your-presentations-suck\/5832?tag=content;drawer-container\">there are actually two of these on the same site<\/a>, each with their own helpful hints on how to stop the suckage), this man boldly made a PowerPoint presentation that illustrates his point: that most PowerPoint presentations are horrible.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/thecroaker\/death-by-powerpoint\">Here is the link to the presentation<\/a>, which was prepared by Alexei Kapterev four years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 I highly suggest flipping through it.\u00c2\u00a0 If nothing else, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good work-time diversion and a break from the monotony.\u00c2\u00a0 But take a moment to appreciate that &#8212; a PowerPoint presentation that you actually want to see?\u00c2\u00a0 Now there is a rare thing.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen some pretty interesting PowerPoint presentations.\u00c2\u00a0 Usually they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the ones that people make as parodies of real presentations and then upload them to YouTube with funny voices and inappropriate pictures.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet this one is a real presentation, with real information.\u00c2\u00a0 Moreover, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 61 slides long, and yet you can breeze through it in five minutes and still learn a thing or two.\u00c2\u00a0 Truly, a rare thing indeed.<\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to point out a couple things that make Kapterev\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s presentation so exemplary:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It reads very quickly.<\/li>\n<li>It has plenty of information.<\/li>\n<li>It breaks this info up so you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not reading one slide for very long.<\/li>\n<li>It works on its own but obviously could be supplemented by a good speaker.<\/li>\n<li>It introduces, explains, and then reiterates its main points to reinforce them.<\/li>\n<li>It is scalable, meaning it can be read through in five minutes or expanded.<\/li>\n<li>It makes good use of imagery to keep you interested but the focus is on the text.<\/li>\n<li>It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use any gimmicky transitions or sound effects to distract from the message.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a huge fan of PowerPoint, but I do recognize it has a place in the corporate world as the standard method for conveying information to a room full of professionals.\u00c2\u00a0 The trick is not to let this become a crutch so that you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to work on making your presentation worthwhile.\u00c2\u00a0 It should, instead, be used as a supplement to your talk &#8212; a way to keep the audience interested and to illustrate the information that you are sharing.<\/p>\n<p>If you want, you can even \u00e2\u20ac\u0153supplement the supplement\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with a handout that includes both the slides and your speaker notes so that people will have something to use as a reference later on.\u00c2\u00a0 But be careful: if you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think of a good reason why they would want to reference your presentation after it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s over, perhaps you should be taking everything back to the drawing board.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, your meeting will still be a waste of time if you didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a good reason for calling it, no matter how well you prepared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by John J. Walters I ran across the best PowerPoint presentation I have ever seen today about the evil among us that is known as PowerPoint.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a bit of a curiosity.\u00c2\u00a0 While others are content to make lists such as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Top 10 Reasons Your Presentation Sucks!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (there are actually two of these on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}