Death by PowerPoint | Hacker News Reader

Death by PowerPoint

news.bbc.co.uk

Reading text on slides and listening in parallel is hard to the point of annoyance and losing interest in the talk. I was always wondering why everyone keeps making the same mistake in their public talks and presentations. So, finally someone said that.

PowerPoint is, I think, a tool for helping otherwise impotent speakers look good. The final result though is the same: just bad speech, poor concepts poorly delivered to the audience.

The best presentations I've witnessed worked like this:

The slides contained only diagrams and SHORT bullet point summaries. No wall of text or anything boring, tedious or annoying to read. Also, the slides shouldn't mirror whats being said, thats boring and redundant. They should summerise though, so that I can glance at the slide and know whats going to (or has been) talked about. This aids me to focus, or to tune out parts that are irrelevant to me. Also, when looking at slides later, it helps as a memory aid for what the talk was about.

There are some good points raised here one's well worth remembering in many scenarios be it to investors, colleagues or academic Peers. The best preseners I've seen almost never use PowerPoint.

Indeed the best presenters I've seen never use slides, or handouts of any sort.

I agree with you that the best presenters probably don't use handouts or powerpoint but maybe it's because they're gifted speakers. I think it's hard for most people to carry an audience without any supporting material. A few slides won't hurt if you're engaging and have information that adds value to your presentation.

The best ones I've seen really aren't that gifted --- they just make an effort to structure what they want to say in a meaningful way, and use the crap out of the chalkboard.

PowerPoint sort of gets a bad rap. It mostly deserves it, because its interface encourages exactly the worst sort of usage, but it can be used well. It's just that this is rare.

The second best PowerPoint tip I've ever heard was "Don't use PowerPoint." The best was to get the rest of the presentation ready, and do the PowerPoint deck last. This forces you to actually make a decent presentation, and use PowerPoint as an aid, as opposed to making a good slide deck and fitting the presentation to it.

The problem is exactly the same as in programming or, really, everything else: people focus too much on the tools, and not enough on the task.

I'm very very far from a good public speaker, but when I do come out of my hole and give a presentation my one simple rule is:

The slides should never stand on their own.

In other words, I try to use the slides as a supplement to the talk.

I agree, slides hold your presentation together. They should give your audience a way to link the different parts of your story to the whole idea.

The best advice I have seen is here (800KB pdf)

http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf

"If all you want to do is create a file of facts and figures, then cancel the meeting and send in a report. Do it in PowerPoint if you want, but it’s not a presentation, it’s a report. It will contain whatever you write down, but don’t imagine for a second that you’re powerfully communicating any ideas.

Communication is about getting others to adopt your point of view, to help them understand why you’re excited (or sad, or optimistic or whatever else you are.) Unless you’re an amazing writer, it’s awfully hard to do that in a report."

Last month I tried, for the first time, to go with the Presentation Zen thing, and I think it turned into one of the best presentations I've ever done.

On the other hand, one key person from the audience has asserted just this morning that I failed to tell her a piece of information that is critical to her. I remember saying it, and it's right there in the notes for the relevant slide.

But boy, do I wish that I had a slide with bullet points on it, so I could show her: "Oh yeah? Well, what's this?".

PPT is a great tool. It's just used incorrectly by the masses.

As someone already mentioned it's best leveraged for support. In most cases as a visual aid. If you can get by without using any words and all imagery then it's more likely to an entertaining presentation.

I also say this knowing that it all depends on the intended audience.

http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/index.htm

Another tip, prepare your presentation on paper using a spider diagram, central theme in the middle, sub-topics adding legs, add extra spiders on spiders as required. You can make something like this very quickly (less than 30 minutes) especially when you know your subject it's a handy cue for the key topics. It can be used to help prepare a PowerPoint however stick to the recommondations on here and in the link.

I try and use as little text as I can on the slides, and just one, or a couple of key images. I find this really helps if I stumble in what I'm saying, or lose track as I don't use paper notes to speak from. Glancing at an image strongly related to your subject really helps to get you quickly back on track.

Great public speaking skills are such a gift - just wish it was one I had.

Lawrence Lessig makes very good slide shows. He does this thing with html-style meta tags that are very cool. He talks, while the slides outline the context.

Why does it take a presentation expert to say PowerPoint presentations are often boring?

Tens of thousands of victims, er, people could have told him that over the past 15-20 years.

This has been submitted already earlier with the original headline: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=772471

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