How many PowerPoint presentation have you at through in the last month? How many have you given? It’s a reasonable bet that most of the presentations looked much the same and were. well, dull. There are books about how to make a good PowerPoint presentation. Every sales training course, every MBA curriculum includes rule-setting about PowerPoint presentations.
As a technical communicator there are plenty of Ph.D. dissertations that conclude with rules about how to give and not give PowerPoint presentation. Typically these involve Information Mapping-esque thinking like “your bullet points should ideally number 7, but always between 5 and 9 points”. I follow these rules, because my left brain tells me that ‘best practice’ is an important concept: we should inherit wisdom and use it and improve it, right?
If you haven’t already discovered it, I recommend to you Seth Godin’s blog. My right brain really enjoys this marketing guru. He’s right almost all the time (imho) fun, funny and truthful. I want to connect you to this post about his method of giving PowerPoint presentations. It’s a really interesting perspective not just on using PowerPoint but the bigger issue of how to give a presentation. I’m pretty sure I can build the principle of emotional connection into most any communication. However, I’d have liked him to talk about some boundaries..avoiding manipulation…becuase that would dishonest communication. I am sure Mr. Godin is a thoroughly ethical chap, so I’m not worried about it.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/01/really_bad_powe.html
Enjoy,
Eddy
