I know that sounds strange coming from a presentation designer, but hear me out. PowerPoint presentations can be awful. Just atrocious. But PowerPoint as a software program is not the problem. PowerPoint is just a tool. When used for good, combined with a passionate presenter who has a good story, it can visually enhance a presentation, helping to engage the audience and increase retention. When used for evil, PowerPoint can send a presentation tumbling off a cliff. The slides become a script, filled with bullet points and paragraphs of text with colors so painful and animations so fast (and unnecessary) that audience members are frantically searching for Exit signs.
A gun is a tool as well, and like PowerPoint, it cannot function without a person at the controls. No gun has ever climbed out of bed, walked down the street, and shot an innocent person. No PowerPoint has ever designed itself either. The humans have the power, and they can use it for good or evil.
Moving away from gloom and doom to something more easily understood, I like to equate PowerPoint to food (except PowerPoint is not necessary to live!). There are good foods and there are bad foods. Both a chicken breast and a Burger King Whopper will satisfy hunger. Both will give your body some type of fuel. However, eating a chicken breast will not only satisfy hunger but it will improve your body’s health. It has lots of protein, which builds muscles and burns fat. The resulting muscles use more calories to function, which helps keep weight down. Your body has improved because of the food you chose. Eating a Whopper will hurt your body's general health. It has an insane amount of calories which you won't be able to burn off, eventually sticking to your insides as fat. The extra fat leads to diabetes, heart disease, and more. Your body has worsened because of the food you chose. The important point is that we all have a choice with what we eat. We can choose the chicken breast, skim milk, veggies and fruit over the Whopper, onion rings, fries and nachos.
What I'm trying to get at is that I don't think it's fair to point the finger at PowerPoint or Keynote as the problem with presentations today. I'm not pointing at the Whopper as the reason for our planet's obesity problem. It's the poor choices we make when choosing what food to eat. When a person chooses to use PowerPoint or Keynote in an attempt to enhance their presentation, that's a big decision because the consequences are great.
Al Gore made the decision to hire a presentation designer to design his Apple Keynote slides for a talk he was giving at TED. That decision ended up leading to a documentary that won two Academy Awards, with Gore's efforts surrounding global climate change ultimately winning a Nobel Prize. He realized his subject matter could be enhanced with visuals and turned to the experts to help him.
Others have made the decision to create a PowerPoint that serves their own interests, using it as a script because they don't want to take the time to practice and prepare. They fill the slides with bullet points and shotty clip art, ultimately wasting the time of all involved.
So what can you do to avoid the latter and end up more like Al? If you know you want to harness the power of slide software but know you don't have the expertise, hire a presentation designer. Depending on your budget they can simply give you a few ideas or they can design it from top to bottom. If you want to go the free route, that's fine too. There are tons of places to learn how to design presentations effectively. I highly recommend purchasing any/all of the books listed on the right of my blog. I have no affiliation with these books and don't make any money if you buy them. I have read them all (obviously) and think they're must-haves for anyone who takes presenting seriously. There are also plenty of blogs you can check out like Presentation Zen, BrainSlides, StickySlides, or any of the blogs listed to the right to learn more about effective presenting. You can also download my free e-book here.
What are your thoughts? Would you like PowerPoint wiped off the face of the earth? Do you love PowerPoint and all of it's wacky animations? What are your thoughts from the audience's perspective?
