PowerPoint points to power for power pointing.

1. PowerPoint
A corporate addiction
January 2014

2. Objective
• Experience a PowerPoint presentation

3. Agenda
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What is PowerPoint?
What’s wrong with PowerPoint?
Why do people use it?
What’s the cure?

4. What is PowerPoint?
• It is:
– A presentation tool
– Replicating the experience of slide projectors with
the magic of technology
– A Microsoft product
– Part of the Microsoft Office Suite
– The generic term for a projected, page by page
presentation
– Abbreviated as PPT – referring to the file
extension for a presentation

5. What’s wrong with PowerPoint?
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It often hampers communication between the speaker and the audience
It was designed to show visuals and diagrams – but people use it mostly for bullet
points
Studies show that reading text projected while someone reads the same content
at you hurts the understanding and memorability
Animations! Clip art! Text that can spin in and out (literally) It holds lots of fonts!
People rarely use the speakers notes section appropriately
The speaker’s computer never successfully connects to the projector
The colors get washed out by the projector
It makes presentations so much more boring-er
Microsoft
People refer to the presentation as a “deck” for some reason and the pages as a
“slide,” exacerbating the weird business speak issue
The more bullets you add, the smaller the font gets, making the slides crowded
and unreadable

6. Why do people use it?
• It walks you through making a presentation so
you don’t have to think about it
• It’s easy to use – for some things
• It’s better than reading off 3x5 cards
– Where do you even find those these days?
• Everyone else uses it – you don’t want to be
different, do you?
• If someone misses the meeting, you can just send
them the file because it’s the exact same thing –
and less of a waste of time

7. What’s the cure?
• Speak directly to the audience with only 3
slides
– Your name
– A metaphorical picture
– A diagram of your biggest statistic or trend data
• Use a flip board instead
– Draw anything you can’t just talk through
• Interact with your audience directly

8. Summary and Recommendation
• PowerPoint sucks
• It makes things boring
• Don’t use it

9. Next Steps
• Overturn the paradigm

10. Thank you!