Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes - The Goodman ...

PowerPoint Is Your Friend
Seriously.
No question about it: PowerPoint was a bargain. First developed under the name
“Presenter” by a company called Forethought, the program and its parent were both
acquired by Microsoft in 1987 for $14 million – chump change for Bill Gates, and a steal
considering subsequent sales that have landed PowerPoint on an estimated 400 million
computers worldwide.
What remains a hotly debated question, though, is whether or not using PowerPoint is
a bargain with the devil. When presenters turn their material over to the AutoContent
Wizard – cookie-cutter software that spits out endless slides with bullets, clip art,
and colorful backgrounds – are they condemning their presentation and whoever sees
it to a slow and painful death? Or is this actually a case of mistaken identity where
a poorly used (but essentially blameless) tool has been subjected to criticism that
belongs elsewhere?
Numerous experts from academia, the business community, and other sectors have
weighed in heavily on these questions. Edward Tufte, professor emeritus at Yale
University, is one of PowerPoint’s harshest critics. In an essay entitled “PowerPoint is Evil”
(Wired, September 2003), Tufte wrote:
“In a business setting, a PowerPoint slide typically shows 40 words, which is about
eight seconds’ worth of silent reading material. With so little information per slide,
many, many slides are needed. Audiences consequently endure a relentless sequentiality,
one damn slide after another. When information is stacked in time, it is difficult to
understand context and evaluate relationships. Visual reasoning usually works more
effectively when relevant information is shown side by side.”
Seth Godin, author, entrepreneur, and self-described “agent of change,” prefers to dwell
on the upside potential of this ubiquitous software. “PowerPoint presents an amazing
opportunity,” Godin writes in his e-book, Really Bad PowerPoint (And How to Avoid It).
“You can use the screen to talk emotionally to the audience’s right brain (through their
eyes), and your words can go through the audience’s ears to talk to their left brain. That’s
what Steven Spielberg does. It seems to work for him.”
Who’s right? Having sat through enough mind-numbing PowerPoint presentations to
last several lifetimes, I understand why its critics are so venomous. But when it comes to
pointing fingers, I think Jerry Weissman has the proper perspective. “Trying to blame
PowerPoint and make it controversial, as Edward Tufte tries to do, is like blaming the
pen company, Mont Blanc, for bad handwriting,” Weissman told us. “It’s not the pen. It’s
the penmanship.”
Boredom by the Pound
pg. 49
“Last year, I did a calculation
of how much PowerPoint is
costing the British economy
each year. If you take the
number of managers in the
country earning 30,000
pounds a year or more,
attending one presentation
for one hour a week, and
you know 90% of the
presentations bore them and
they get nothing out of them
… the answer is 7.8 billion
pounds [or roughly 14.2
billion US dollars]. And that’s
not including the time people
spend preparing the slides,
the travel costs to the venue,
or the hire of rooms. The real
cost is very much higher.”
– Max Atkinson
Author
Lend Me Your Ears