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How Power Point Killed Public Speaking

The origins of the use of Power Point were solidly grounded in good intentions. Remember slides? People put pictures on them, or graphs -- visual aids. They were intended to act as accompaniments to lectures and presentations.

The whole idea was that the speaker would talk for a while, and then occasionally show a slide that illustrated a point with a picture or a striking image, or made a set of numbers clear with a bar graph or a pie chart.

Slides were time-consuming to create, and difficult to change. So most people used them sparingly. I once saw a speech by a National Geographic photographer that included a hundred slides, but each one was a uniquely wonderful picture he had culled from thousands, literally. He was entitled.

Then came Power Point.

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More on Using Powerpoint on the Pivotal PowerPoint Pages

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The PowerPoint of no return

A FRIEND RECENTLY joined a multinational company where she was required to undertake several business training courses. In one particular course, she emailed her assignment as a Word attachment. The assignment was promptly
returned ungraded because she didn't "effectively answer the question".

She was, however, invited to resubmit the assignment, which she did and shot straight to the top of the class.

It was a remarkable turnaround by any standard - all the more so because, aside from the addition of two or three extra sentences, the content of the resubmitted assignment was identical to the original. The only significant change she had made was cutting and pasting her assignment into a PowerPoint template. Unless PowerPoint makes you more intelligent - and it's a safe bet that it doesn't - the lesson of the course was that form trumps content any day.

Loved by some, loathed by many more, PowerPoint has become a byword for much that's wrong with contemporary culture.

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More on how to use Powerpoint

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Don't.Read.Your.Dumb.Slides

From the Shameless Self Promoter

I suspect some folks do put up the charts and bullet points and text-dense slide for the simple reason that they believe the information will speak for itself, so they won't have to do all that pesky work of presenting it in an interesting and useful way.

Here's a hint: IT WON'T.

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Using Computer Presentation Programs Effectively

"Are you still doing speeches in the stone age?" This was the question a participant asked of a presenter at a recent conference I attended. The presenter had lugged along a box of transparency slides to show during his half-day seminar, and I admit, I was a little doubtful at first about the lack of modern technology. The presentation went well, overall, but could have clearly been enhanced by a good Microsoft PowerPoint, Lotus Freelance, or Aldus Persuasion program. Additionally, it would have been much easier to present for the speaker, and definitely lighter to carry on the airplane.

Later in the month, however, I got a different perspective when I spoke a participant in one of my seminars after the rest of the class had gone. She told me that when she first walked into the room, she was very disheartened to see a computer-generated image being shown on the screen. She confided that although she had enjoyed the presentation entirely, and that I had overcome her initial apprehension, her first reaction was:"Oh no! Not another PowerPoint Presentation"

This reaction is not unique, I've found. When talking to people in my seminars and social settings, the message I get is clear; People are tired of worn-out power point presentations! Does this mean we should jettison the technology and go back to the "stone age", as one person put it, in giving our presentations? No more than we should ban television because of the likes of Jerry Springer and Temptation Island. The medium itself is not to blame, it is how that medium is used that falls short.

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We’re in an Epidemic and it’s called PowerPoint!

Everyone uses it, but is it the best way to present your information?

Most people who use PowerPoint of give Presentations have not had much, if any, public speaking or presentation skills training. However, we tend to copy what others are doing. I would like to suggest stop doing what everyone else is doing and do it right. The following steps will help you stand out above the rest.

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Powerpoint backgrounds

To create effective backgrounds in PowerPoint is one of the most challenging tasks for a presenter, as balancing visual impact, layout balance, properly matching colors while keeping great legibility is nothing that I would consider easy. Article continues

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Powerpoint backgrounds

To create effective backgrounds in PowerPoint is one of the most challenging tasks for a presenter, as balancing visual impact, layout balance, properly matching colors while keeping great legibility is nothing that I would consider easy.

Article continues