December 15, 2003

Powerpoint: It makes speeches terrible

My spin:I've used Microsoft Power Point for my speeches over the past couple of years. I've also sat in on dozens of speeches where the speaker used Power Point. HOWEVER, so often the speaker has used the Power Point as the main attraction, instead of as a tool for making the speech, better.

Listen, if you are going to use Power Point, use it sparingly, use it to add life and not death to your presentations.

News Clip: NY Times: In August, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA released Volume 1 of its report on why the space shuttle crashed. As expected, the ship's foam insulation was the main cause of the disaster. But the board also fingered another unusual culprit: PowerPoint, Microsoft's well-known ''slideware'' program.

NASA, the board argued, had become too reliant on presenting complex information via PowerPoint, instead of by means of traditional ink-and-paper technical reports. When NASA engineers assessed possible wing damage during the mission, they presented the findings in a confusing PowerPoint slide -- so crammed with nested bullet points and irregular short forms that it was nearly impossible to untangle. ''It is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation,'' the board sternly noted. (full story)

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