Comments on: Managing the most evil technology of all

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 24 May 2005 11:31:42 +0000

It depends if you are going to print the slides for use as a handout. If you are, then put just enough information on each slide that people looking back at them later will have the bare bones of what you said – but not all of it. Leave white space on the slides and elaborate on the text, give caveats and exceptions and connections to other topics. This way people can write down the extras themselves. People will feel compelled to pay more attention to everything you say, even if it’s on the slide, so that they don’t miss the additions and because you aren’t just reading bullet points your speech can flow better and is inherently easier to listen to. Jokes or sarcastic comments about the topic also worked for me, but I did know my audience and tutor fairly well.

By: Cliff

Cliff — Sun, 15 May 2005 21:50:51 +0000

Here’s the URL that “L.” mentioned – a way to present clear and focused thinking without any bullet points whatsoever:

http://www.sociablemedia.com

By: L.

L. — Sun, 15 May 2005 20:08:19 +0000

PowerPoint is just a tool – you can choose to use it well or badly, it is not inherently evil. Bullet point talks are perfectly appropriate in some cases and not in others. You are all over generalising madly.

Check out the Beyond Bullet Points website though. (I don’t have the URL to hand)

Much worse than bullet points are transitions.

By: Phil Edwards

Phil Edwards — Sun, 15 May 2005 12:38:47 +0000

As far as using it as an aide memoire for your talk; that's a load of crap meant for people who haven't rehearsed their work and don't know enough about it to blag. The worst of it is, once people have seen PP used this way a few times they start to believe that everything they need to say should be on the slides. Since slides are supposed to be bullet-lists, that's all they write - and they end up delivering a list of subject-headings and acronyms in the belief that it's a presentation. A fairly techie presentation I attended a while back went very largely like this (slide text bolded): "Technologies, some of the technologies we use. DAO, anyone used that? Just a few of you. OGSA-DAI, that's quite an interesting one. Globus Toolkit, anyone used that? Pretty much the same people..." And so on for eight or nine bullet points - followed by another slide listing eight or nine architectures or front ends or Web services protocols... If rule one is don't recite, rule 1.1 is you do not need the slides. Slides are for you to talk across or paraphrase or undercut or contradict or parody (or to undercut, contradict or parody what you're saying).

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 14 May 2005 21:22:02 +0000

That particular exercise was peer-marked and doesn’t contribute to my final mark… on the feedback sheets my “use of audio and visual materials” was average/don’t know, rather than good, though my speaking style was marked as good.

One of our lecturers used mind-mapping software as well, on a projector; the result was similar to his use of PowerPoint – his talking was led on by the pre-created diagram thoroughout. Interface-wise I thought it was horrible, only a small portion of the maps are shown at any one time. The display rapidly changed as branches of the map were opened and later closed, which was jarring to the eye and quite distracting. I can see a lot of room for improvement to turn it into a proper presentation (rather than mere organisation) tool – maybe shrinking or greying out parts of the maps that are not immediately being focused on, rather than hiding them outright. Even then, I think the demands it places on the speaker, making them have to pay constant attention to the screen rather than their audience, doesn’t bode well for the quality of presentations.

By: Ric

Ric — Sat, 14 May 2005 20:55:45 +0000

Assuming you were assessed on these presentations, how did they take your ‘alternative’ approach? I know where I am there are a large chunk of drones/morons who would immediately mark me down. On the other hand there does seem to be a new realisation of what you are saying and a move away from ‘death by powerpoint’ (or ‘death by viewgraph’ where there is only an OHP)

The first good example of a different approach to presentations i ever got was the Free Culture presenation by Lessig – http://www.eff.org/IP/freeculture/

I’m pretty sure you know the Ed Tufte approach to PP, so i’ll leave that out.

I was also going to link to an article about new mind-mapping software competing with PP but can’t find it. The concept was basically to run your presentation off a mind map by clicking/zooming into areas of interest then coming back out to the big picture as required. Anyway, not sure what where i’m going anymore…

By: Derek Marshall

Derek Marshall — Sat, 14 May 2005 16:18:02 +0000

Nice one. You are so right.

I don’t (nearly) ever use bullets in PP presentations; instead, look at the information you want (or have) to present, and see how it fits together around a common theme. Use the graphical layout of the page to enhance this theme and the key points you want to present. In the same way that you remember the route to a mate’s house by landmarks, you remember information better when you have a visual link to the context it’s in.

As far as using it as an aide memoire for your talk; that’s a load of crap meant for people who haven’t rehearsed their work and don’t know enough about it to blag. IMHO, the PP should be used as background, to contextualise or to highlight detail appropriately. There’s no point delivering the same thing twice – treat the audience as stupid and they will be stupid in return. Treat them as intelligent, able to use their eyes *and* their ears, and if you get it right they will be intelligent for you.

I hate PowerPoint, and the entire MicroSoft (“Make it easy to produce the same document as everyone else”) philosophy, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be used to good effect if you consciously refuse to fit into it’s straightjacketed approach.