Death by PowerPoint

I don't know why so many PowerPoint presentations are sooooooo painful. PowerPoint itself is a wonderful tool. It can allow a presenter to use graphics to illustrate content - and research shows that generally multi-media is better than single a medium in communicating. But despite the capabilities of the PowerPoint tool, so many presenters just put their text on the slides. Even worse, they put lots and lots and lots of text on the slides. The result is a numbing exercise in visual overload which impedes, rather than enhances, communication. I come from an advertising background and I've learned over and over again that one can only communicate a few points in a communication message. My worst nightmare has been clients who want to shoehorn twenty points into a thirty second commercial. Yet, presenters think nothing of this. Slides are free ... space is virtually unlimited ... so more must be better. The casualty is clear communication. For a comic look at PowerPoint gone horribly wrong, click here Academics and government folks seem to be the worst offenders when it comes to creating dreadful presentations. I guess they feel that they have to prove their worth by piling things higher and deeper. The good news is that there are good books available on creating effective presentations. I recommend them all the time. The option, unfortunately, is death by PowerPoint. And as someone once pointed out - they don't call them bullets for nothing.