Death by PowerPoint

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294 comments

Comments 1 - 10 of 294 previous next Post a comment

+ sarb6 1 day ago

this did not download, nor did the http, you sent
me in order to download......hmmmm
now what?
+ guest2fa4f10 2 days ago
The best d@mn presentation I ever saw!
Thank you!
+ Harald_Rolf 1 week ago
you point it out!

Excellent work
+ imco engineering and construction company 2 weeks ago
WOW!

U hav just given me a vibrant idea 2 make my presentation next wk a win-win!

Many thanks 4 sharing this!
+ dwalker500 3 weeks ago
Thanks for sharing this. It is great. I will be sharing it with my team members.
+ ToddStark 1 month ago
Very interesting! I enjoyed this. What I got out of it is that presentations are actually not intended to involve thinking, they are intended to entertain, amuse, and be memorable. They are meant to inspire action but prevent people from thinking too much before acting. Basically, a presentation is intended to be a form of propaganda! (Well, marketing to be more gentle).

I think this is pretty much in line with how Ed Tufte the 'data artist' conceptuallizes the use of PowerPoint as well, except that he casts this form of presentation in a negative rather than positive light because his goal is to facilitate clear thinking about complex data rather than entertaining people and getting them to act. I tend to agree with him, but I can also see the value of entertaining people to get concepts across.

The entertainment presentation view is reasonable, and supportable I think, but it makes a presentation a very speciallized form of communication that is different from the decision making or problem solving process that most people probably assume is going on in meetings, or would optimally like to happen in meetings.

Entertaining people is great, and useful, but it isn't neccessarily why a meeting is being called, and doesn't neccessarily do what needs to be done as far as getting people thinking about the right things.

Some of the 'worst' slides demonstrated are actually reasonably good engineering diagrams for speciallized purposes for the same reason they are such bad demo slides, because there is so much information in front of your eyes at once. Having a complex system at a glance is often invaluable for making engineering decisions and locating problems. It is just wildly inappropriate for flashing up on the screen during a presentation where you simply want to make a point (unless the point is: just look at how complex this system is, we dare you to try to remember anything about it!). That's what makes some of the examples so ironic, they were *intended* to be 'propaganda' slides to sell products and popularize ideas and instead they are deliberately emulating complex engineering diagrams. Mixed purposes to say the least.

You can't neccessarily avoid the tradeoff between being a good marketer (most useful for teaching new concepts or motivating action) and being a good presenter of dense but well structured technical information (most useful for facilitating problem solving and for facilitate complex decisions).

Very nice work, thanks for sharing this!

Todd
+ Diana Jimenez 1 month ago
Realmente sensacional
+ tianfeng 1 month ago
谢谢
+ ThisIsCool 1 month ago
nice work!
+ Volkan 1 month ago
that was really WOW :D thanks for that presentation

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Death by PowerPoint - Presentation Transcript

Death by PowerPoint (and how to fight it) Alexei Kapterev
There are 300 million PowerPoint users in the world* * estimate
They do 30 million presentations each day* * estimate
About a million presentations are going on right now* * estimate
50% of them are unbearable* * conservative estimate
LOTS of people are killing each other with bad presentations. NOW.
They are all DEAD! Well, almost.
A vicious circle Bad Bad presentations communication Less training Bad relations Less Less money sales
Let’s make the world a better place.
Why are they doing it?!
Research shows:  Bullets don’t kill people  People kill people  Unintentionally  Yet regularly
Mainly due to lack of...  Significance  Structure  Simplicity  Rehearsal
 Significance
Why do you present? To “pass the information”? l Your boss told you to? l Or to make meaning? l
What’s the subject and why it matters to you?
How presentations work  Significance creates passion  Passion attracts attention  Attention leads to action
Are you passionate? Check yourself.
This is passion.
This is passion.
This is passion.
This is not.
Can’t find the meaning? Don’t present.
 Structure
Structure is how you place the building blocks of your story.
Q: What structure to use? A: Any – as long as it is:  Convincing  Memorable  Scalable
Structure choices  Problem – Pathway – Solution  Problem – Solution – Reasoning  Fancy stuff (if it makes sense)
Give 3-4 reasons supporting your point. They will not remember more anyway.
} Memorable opening 1 More details... 1 argument 2 More details... 3 More details... 45 1 More details... 2 argument 2 More details... minutes 3 More details... 1 More details... 3 argument 2 More details... 3 More details... Memorable closing
You can tell this in... l 5 minutes l 15 minutes l 45 minutes It is scalable.
 Simplicity
Everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler.
Apparently, being simple is not that simple. Will give you some examples.
Don’t worry: knowing the language doesn’t really help.
Notice cool background.
Hey, we’ve got DATA!
This one’s my favorite.
Fundamental problem?
PowerPoint helps to:  Visualize ideas  Create key points  Impress
They use it as:  Prompter  Handouts  Data dumps
People read faster than you speak. This means you are useless.
How much is an extra slide? $0.00. Zero Dollars. Break it in several. It’s free.
What’s the point? One simple point? Remove everything else.
Well, some are just hopeless.
Ditch stupid “rules” l Do you remember the rule: l 7 lines per slide or less l 7 words per line or less? l Well, it is just plain stupid l If you follow this “rule” l You get a slide like this
. d Ditch stupid “rules” e p. l Do you remember the rule: mg a in l 7 lines per slide or less rr Co l 7 words per line or less? l Well, it is just plain stupid B l If you follow this “rule” l You get a slide like this
Simple design rules*  One point per slide  Few matching colours  Very few fonts  Photos, not clipart * pun intended
Less text. More imagery. Wild imagery.
But what if I need to send or print the slides?
Write a document.
The Largest Leasing Companies • Hansa Leasing • РГ Лизинг • Авангард-Лизинг • Raiffeisen Leasing • ММБ-Лизинг Make 2 sets of slides
Print with notes.
Inform with little text* * yes you can
 Rehearsal
It will never work completely for the first time. Trust me.
YOU PRESENTATION RECEPIENT Feedback. Go get some.
No audience? Present to the furniture. But aloud. Try it.
Check the room and equipment.
Presentation checklist
All this leads to...
Wow* * great presentations
Alexei Kapterev Offshore presentation design & consulting ak@realtimestrategy.ru