• Will something replace slides? Please?

    Posted on April 13th, 2007 by and currently 12 commenting.

    Sorry I’ve been a bit absent from the blog recently, but I have been under a mountain of slides. I shudder to think what the % of total working hours of my career have been spent making, perfecting, or presenting slides. My first role at Dell had a very formal title – Corporate Strategy Analyst in the Office of the Chairman, but could have been simplified to “slide jockey”. I would figure out what the main goal of the communication was, search for data to support the overall message, analyze the data and then graphically present it to build a compelling argument. Useful skills to hone, but it would definitely leave me with an empty feeling post-presentation when slides were filed away, and I was left wondering if they had an impact. Such is the angst of the communications professional. I am living the career aspirations of Say Anything’s Lloyd Dobler: “I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.” Check.

    Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with slides, but considering the speed at which online technologies & social media tools have advanced, doesn’t it seem a bit archaic that we’re still using Powerpoint & Keynote to make our points? The juxtaposition was glaring at SXSWi where colleagues were Twittering back and forth from different sides of the same session while speakers struggled to hold their attention with PPT.

    Someone at a recent WOMMA event suggested that I check out Mind Mapping as an alternative form of visually enforcing verbal communication. After looking at dozens of Mind Maps from Google Images, I can’t seem to make heads or tails of them. If they need further explanation, my guess is that this isn’t going to be the “slide killer”.

    So, what’s the future? Will my kids still be using Powerpoint? Am I wrong about MindMapping? Will we go retro and switch back to transparencies? Tell me that Google has a team on this! If you know the answer, please tip me off. Until then, I’ll be adding some “custom animation” to my deck for Wednesday…

  • Christy

    I can tell you that PowerPoint is now included in all (public school) elementary curriculum…

  • http://www.suempresa.com Carlos

    Well, i strongly agree that PowerPoint has seen it´s glory days, but time goes by, and i think Mind Mapping is an awesome tool, but for other purposes, it has nothing to do with presentations. Maybe a practical solution for the slides could be Flash Macromedia, i know, it requires some technical knowledge of the software, but in those times PowerPoint needed them too. Or how about a WebSite dedicated for that presentation, i mean, with the really low prices that you can actually find in the market for a domain name and the most basic hosting youre done! No problem about technical skills for page programming though, almost every hosting offers “Magical-site-construction” applications that work just great for this. This way, even after your presentation is done, anyone can review your “slides” from any place via Internet. ;)

  • http://www.mokummarketing.com/blog David Koopmans

    Virginia, forget the technology; it’s irrelevant. The reason people are twittering during a presentation is because the presentation is not engaging. (And they don’t have any manners.

    If you have a look at one of Seth Godin’s presentations you’ll see what I mean; an engaging powerful presentation using maybe 10 slides and you won’t find a bullet point in it.
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294

    Tom Peters, http://www.tompeters.com, recently posted a slide show he uses in his presentations that was more than 100 slides(!) for a 1. 5 hour presentation. he assured me that people love it, and I haven’t seen him present, but my guess is that he could do much, much better whatever tool he uses.

    Anyone interested in improving presentations should also note Cliff Atkinson, from http://www.beyondbullets.com/

    I’ve dedicated a category on my blog to the topic of improving presentations as well. http://www.mokummarketing.com/blog/2005/10/26/113028106484287047/

    I hope this adds to the conversation.

  • http://www.wordofmouthbook.com Andy Sernovitz

    Hey, Vdub —

    Check out the World’s Best Presentation Contest:
    http://www.slideshare.net/contest/worlds-best-presentation-contest

    My favorite is:
    http://www.slideshare.net/rohitbhargava/the-25-basic-styles-of-blogging-and-when-to-use-each-one

    And … I’ve shared the stage with Brain’s own Spike Jones, who does damn good work with his slides. Remember, it’s not the equipment, it’s how you use it.

    Cheers,

    Andy

    Andy Sernovitz
    Author
    Word Of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking

  • http://branddna.blogspot.com/ Stan Lee

    David K stole my thunder, but I’ll state my point anyway.

    Powerpoint is not the problem – It’s what people do with it.

    If people are twittering during a presentation it’s either a bad presenation or a poor presenter. First rule of presenting is don’t lose control of the room.

  • Pingback: As You Can See On Slide 63… | Gate911

  • http://www.peoplekaizen.com Chuck Yorke

    I’m finding a lot of good comments here. Recently, I created a presentation for a client that consisted of pictures (at their request) and almost no words – and not one bullet point. Later a few (very few) words were added to the slides. I like video better, but it’s not always practical. Also, depending on the presentation, sometimes bullet points are appropriate (sorry about that).

  • http://www.brainsonfire.com Mr. Steve

    I don’t think V-Dub’s point is that the presenter has lost control of the room, but instead, the technology for personal communication (Blackberrys and Twitter) have FAR surpassed that of Professional Presentation and communication (Powerpoint and overhead projectors).

    Think about it like this…you’re having a birthday party for your 14 year old girl, and you spend weeks planning it…cake, decorations, entertainers…only to realize that New Kids on the Block aren’t cool anymore.

    So what about keeping slides, but, going along with the dedicated website idea, having the entire audience looking at them with handhelds? Just an idea, to keep the conversation going.

  • Christy

    Mr. Steve – You got the point! How can a presenter combine PowerPoint and Twitter in a presentation?

    Send text-formatted information, like key points, quoted statistics or an important text passage via Twitter as the point is being made. Heck, maybe this is the way that bullet points are delivered, too. Master queuing the points and data ahead of time.

    Then, back yourself up visually with engaging illustrations delivered by either PowerPoint or Flash. Again, the technology really doesn’t matter, but kids-these-days are being taught PowerPoint first, so don’t expect this to die soon.

    The combination of these should keep even the most distractable people ping-ponging nicely between their Crackberries and your presentation.

  • http://brainsonfire.com/blog VeeDub

    Wow! Great comments. I agree that you can make Powerpoint (or Keynote or transparencies, etc) sing with style and technique. I have definitely seen the house brought down by presenters who understand how to use visuals to accent their points or add humor to a presentation. Heck, An Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar! I still question, however, why the same ingenuity in development being applied to social networking isn’t being applied to these slide tools on which so many of us are dependent. Do we think conference and presentation formats will change over the next decade or will they remain as similar as they have over the past decade? What could change to make it more engaging?

  • http://www.rms.biz Joe O’Keefe

    Regarding the question, “Do we think conference and presentation formats will change over the next decade or will they remain as similar as they have over the past decade? What could change to make it more engaging?”

    I think it is unlikely to drastically change anytime soon. Too many presenters feel comfortable with their visual toys. In my own presentations I rely more on the visuals to keep me on point than to make a point. The other thing that I am sure everyone is aware of is the fact that the visual is a great opportunity to connect because it offers a different stimulus than the sound of the presenter’s voice. Of course, this is only effective if the presenter has a point to make).

    I believe “the changes to make them more engaging” will be rooted in the WOM models that are emerging all of the time. Whenever I present for my company I spend the thirty to forty minutes prior to the presentation speaking to the participants individually. I mill about the group and look for good questions and use that intel to make my points more relevant. This is not a new idea but in terms of a movement away from visual presentations I hope we will see more presenters focusing on their audience the way savvy marketers are encouraging companies to focus on THEIR audience.

    The connections must be genuine and obvious and ask permission to raise the example in the presentation. Really, the only thing I care about as a presenter is that the participants walk away with a strong sense of what I am presenting. If they say, “wow, his Keynote presentation was really cool”, what am I gaining? I have just wasted our time! As a presenter, I should be concerned about the real-life applications of the information and make an effort to tap into some of the attitudes, values and rewards that the group brings with them. Then they are going to raise their level of concern with regards to the content and then a good thing happens, LEARNING.

    Thanks for zeroing in on your concern with the follow-up question. It is healthy food for philosophical thought.

  • Christy

    Joe, I can’t believe how much this has been on my mind since Virginia brought it up. I’m so much less of a “which technology do we use?” person, and more of a “what does it produce?” person. Which made me miss this great secondary question.

    The tools we use — will they change? I don’t think there’s a great replacement out there yet. I have seen good presentations done using web pages instead of Powerpoint. I’ve seen Flash animations. I think that we’re stuck with what we have, because there isn’t a way to make something that’s easy to use, yet as flexible as it has to be to make everyone happy.

    Yet, I still agree that Powerpoint is still the downfall of most presentations. Panel discussions are more along the lines of the word-of-mouth/engaging the experience approach of which you speak.

    Too much emphasis is placed on the visuals in many cases. And, no matter the tool, it will still take fine-tuned skill to develop the elements that are presented.

    I love the point you make about wasting everyone’s time if all people come away with is, “Wow! That was cool!”

    How about we throw away the presentation slides and challenge ourselves to *really* talk to each other? What about a plain ol’ white board? ;-) (Yes, now I’m delving into the ridiculous…)