Liquid Canuck: Death to Death by Powerpoint

I've been spending a lot of time recently, reading about how to create and deliver a more effective presentation. One great resource is Garr Reynolds' blog, Presentation Zen. I have yet to read his book, by the same name, but it's on my wish list.

An affiliated resource is this Squidoo lens created by Seth Godin.

Garr's mission in life is to eradicate those "Death by PowerPoint" presentations that we've all attended (or given).

I'm now starting to think that my presentations would be more effective if I flashed back to elementary school, where each of us had to conduct a "Show'n'Tell" class. We brought in something from home (our only visual aid) and spoke about it for five minutes. The success of each presentation rested solely with me and my classmates, not the "thing" we brought in for the presentation.

Later in life, somehow the roles got switched and we began relying more on the visual aids than our own verbal communication skills.

For many of us, PowerPoint became a public teleprompter.

And that's when presentations became "deadly".

It seems to me that one way of determining whether PowerPoint slides are "overwhelming" the verbal message is by showing the slideshow to a complete stranger. If they can glean the message from the slideshow, chances are your message is relying more on the slides than your verbal presentation.

If you take a look at slideshows of renowned presenters, without benefit of the actual live presentation, chances are you'd have a hard time determining what the message was. And that's because the slides are used to punctuate a point, not make a point.

Words are scarce. Illustrations are simple. Graphics/photos are eye catching, sometimes stark and sometimes unexpected. Great presenters' slides don't tell the story. They serve to illustrate it.

Take a look at a slideshow done by Seth Godin in 2000, about his new book (at the time) called "Unleashing the Ideavirus".

Without the commentary, without the "story", this is simply a collection of eclectic slides. If however, you were able to see Seth's presentation, I'm betting you would come away excited by his vision for marketing in a Web2.0 world.

Here is a short video clip of Lawrence Lessig talking about "Video is the new Democracy". Notice his presentation slides as you listen to the short speech. Very few words per slide, written in an old typewriter font (his trademark). The audience focus is on him, his words, his message, not his slides. In fact, a copy of the slideshow wouldn't be particularly helpful to anyone who had not attended the presentation.

Watch.