Monday, January 14, 2008

I hate Power Point Presentations

I just read a great blog by Guy Kawasaki. He has 10 (really 13) questions for Garr Reynolds, the author of, " Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter)."

I especially liked the following question and answer:

Question: How did we get to this place where most presentations suck?

Answer: There are many reasons. First of all, presenting exceptionally well isn’t easy. In fact it’s hard. That’s why we find great presenters—and great communicators in general—so remarkable. They are all too rare. Many professionals simply have never had much practice and just follow conventional wisdom and do it “like everyone else” instead of doing it effectively.

This reinforced my observation of why I inwardly grown at the beginning of most power point presentations. Poor presentation slide decks and too much text on each page just make me cringe. People tend to load the slide decks up with too many words because they don't practice and are afraid of speaking without the crutch of words on the power point page. So many people think that poor presentations is what is normal.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have to agree with that. It was especially apparent in my nonverbal communication class where all 70 people had to make a presentation. Even though the content of their presentations was a part of our test, I eventually stopped going on those days because it was so boring(still made an A).

They did exactly what you said - relied too much on the power point. Why bother standing up there and reading us the page word for word? Why put so many words on the page when it is just so annoying?

Sadly, I don't think it was because they didn't care about what their presentation looked like, but it was like you said - they don't know any better. Yet, when each of them got up there and did the same thing it must have reinforced that doing it that way was ok. It obviously annoyed the professor, but for some reason beyond my understanding she still gave them good grades. I don't get it.

Deb