Bad Power Point

Holy cow there's a lot of bad PowerPoint out here. In fact, there are almost no good presentations.

It's not a new problem. I found an article from 1985 titled Let There Be Stoning, complaining about boring presentations and suggesting that such people should have rocks thrown at them. I wouldn't go quite that far, and I dislike the part in the article where the guy describes his public criticism of a particularly bad presenter. But seriously, something needs to be done.

Nobody likes to sit through a dense, convoluted presentation, do they? And yet, the standard approach is exactly that. It hit me the other day that we design our presentation slides the same way we design weapon systems - complex, endless and ineffective.

I think a big part of the problem many of us never got any training on how to create good presentations. It just wasn't part of the curriculum when we were in school. And yet, that's a big part of the job. It seems to me that it's incumbent on us as professionals to educate ourselves on how to communicate effectively.

And I nominate Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen book & blog as a great starting point. If you give presentations, please please please read his blog, get his book, and start doing things differently...