More... Life After Death by Powerpoint 2010

As I've been preparing for several upcoming events, I've been spending a lot of time in Powerpoint to create my presentations. I've mentioned before, a reoccurring theme in this blog is the "Death by Powerpoint" syndrome and the challenges that are faced in meeting rooms all over the world. How do we create presentations that engage audiences and get our messages across? In one of my early blog posts I shared a hilarious video Life After Death by PowerPoint Video by Don McMillan, a stand up comedian who has honed his skill at corporate comedy working 12 years as an engineer and manager in Silicon Valley and 18 years doing stand-up comedy. In October 2009, Don was named the #1 Corporate comedian by CBS BNET. This a new and expanded version of his YouTube hit "Life After Death by PowerPoint". Enjoy this little excursion from all the Flash bashing and Google world domination news...



Related posts: ?

Duarte Design's Five Rules for Making Presentations that Don't Suck

Everyone on some level must hate PowerPoint, because it evokes the image of endless hours slide boredom and train wreck presentations. PowerPoint first appeared in the mid-1980s and became the De facto standard for business presentations competing against early players like Aldus Persuasion and Harvard Graphics. Over the years it's become one of the most abused pieces of software because, in essence, it's a design tool for presentations and not everyone is good designer. But there are people out there who are trying to make a change and save the world from "Death by Powerpoint". Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte are two that come right mind as they have built their businesses and brands on creating inspirational presentation designs.

Nancy Duarte is author of slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, and CEO of Duarte Design, the firm that was created Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth presentation. This video, Duarte’s Five Rules for Creating World-Changing Presentations, expands on the trailer that was included in the release of Microsoft Office 2010 Public Beta last fall and was created using PowerPoint 2010.

Rather than look at this video as a marketing tool for Duarte Designs (which it does a great job at doing) – consider this as a public service announcement.

Nancy Duarte shared the 5 Rules in a guest post, 5 Tips on Getting PowerPoint to Sing! on the The PowerPoint Team Blog:

"The foundation of the script came from the Manifesto: The Five Theses of the Power of a Presentation from our book slide:ology which are:

1. Treat Your Audience as King: They didn’t come to your presentation to see you. They came to find out what you can do for them. Make it clear what they are to do.
2. Spread Ideas and Move people: Communicate your ideas with strong visual grammar to engage all their senses and they will adopt the ideas as their own.
3. Help The Audience See What You’re Saying: Guide your audience through ideas in a way that helps, not hinders their comprehension. Appeal not only to their verbal senses, but to their visual senses as well.
4. Practice design, Not Decoration: Don’t just make pretty talking point. Instead, display information in a way that makes complex information clear.
5. Cultivate Healthy Relationships: Display information in the best way possible for comprehension rather than using slides as a crutch." - from The PowerPoint Team Blog : 5 Tips on Getting PowerPoint to Sing!

Related:

• Larry Kless' Weblog: VizThink Webinar: Creating Powerful Presentations with Nancy Duarte
• Duarte Blog » Blog Archive » 5 Ways to Make PowerPoint Sing! (And Dance!)

More Death By Powerpoint

I use Powerpoint at my day job on a daily basis. It's the same old, same old. Bullet points, graphs, spreadsheets, needless animation, presenters reading their slides, etc., etc. I always recommend to people that "less is more" and using less text slides and more pictures and videos are better. I posted a great video on this subject called Life After Death by PowerPoint by Don McMillan several months ago here and this video follows a similar humorous track.

From: brainrulesbook

Brain Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses. The average PowerPoint slide has 40 words. Use pictures and don't kill your audience with bullets.
More about the "Brain Rules" book and film at http://www.brainrules.net/

Life After Death by Powerpoint

When I first had the idea to start this blog I thought about posting this video right away. A colleague of mine had sent me this a few months ago and I crack up every time I watch it, because I see these mistakes on a daily basis at my job.


Life After Death by PowerPoint

Don McMillan | MySpace Video

The video is from one of his comedy sketches and you can view more of his video on his MySpace page.

Here's another must-see slideshow created by presentation consultant Alexei Kapterev called “Death by PowerPoint (and how to fight it)”. He describes the slideshow as, "Fighting death by PowerPoint... How to make a presentation and not to bore your audience to death"

| View | Upload your own

If you want some advise on creating better Powerpoints for video, I've included a link below to a document I created a number of years ago for my videoconferencing clients called, "Designing Effective Graphics for Videoconferencing."


DivShare File - designing_ppt.pdf


You can also check Garr Reynolds' web site for his Top 10 Slide Tips. His blog Presentation Zen also offers a wealth of professional design and presentation tips.

Finally, if you can't get enough of Powerpoint you can also check out Master Views International.





The web site is devoted to "Information Design and Powerpoint Skills, Tools and Resources: For International Presenters." I highly recommend it but be warned, if you're not careful you could spend hours there.