Say “NO” to PowerPoint Week
Well, you knew it was coming, one more reason to send out a card. First the gift card companies invent valentines day and then father’s day and now “Say No to PowerPoint” week which is, I assume, an effort to sell more cards in a time of declining sales.
As a Fastcompany short article states:
Suffering from PowerPoint fatigue? You’re not alone. Tech conferences, including Demo and Finovate, have banned boring slide shows in favor of short, fast-paced product demos. For young companies, dissing checkerboard fadeaways and cheap gradient backgrounds does more than entertain an audience; it could make a sale. “It’s not about bullet points or the company, but what have they built?” says Finovate CEO Eric Mattson. “If you show your product to us, and we go, ‘Wow, we can grasp that in seven minutes, and we want that,’ then the customers will want it too.” We’ll buy that — no pie charts required.
However, the issue is not bad PowerPoint, no, it’s bad, thoughtless presentations. Sure, PowerPoint contributes but that is a symptom and not the cause.
The problem is that too many people put too little thought into presenting effectively. I blame business schools with their complete lack of focus on the right brain and on presentation skills.
Instead of a class teaching presentation skills, let’s teach improv skills, or comedic timing or creative thinking…anything to engage the entire person.
Instead we turn and blame our tools. Bob Vila would not like that…only a poor craftsperson blame their tools.
Try these remedies….
“Avoiding Death by PowerPoint”
Here is a resource called Wow!That Presentation was Awesome!(This is for fee, $50. The first three slides are teaser but contain valuable information and then you hit the “toll booth.”)
